By Inna Rogatchi, Times of Israel—
On the late night of October 2, 2021, Simon returned to the place he knew so well . He used to live here with his beloved wife Cyla and their only daughter Paulinka before she moved with her family to Israel, for so many years. Almost six decades.
It was not an ordinary life. Not so many of us are working being under 24/7 protection by the armed police in the front of his office, line Simon was . Not many of us would deliberately set up our office at the building with such a solid basement that it was chosen during the WWII by the Gestapo to set up their head-quarters there in Vienna. Even if I would not know about that harrowing fact, I would always feel uncomfortable in that so stony and so cold inside building with that abyss- like sense while glancing from the 5th storey where the Simon’s office of his famous Jewish Documentation Center was , behind that door with permanent armed police officer sitting on the chair in front of it.
Simon went to his office every morning, except Shabbes, for over fifty years. He was a man of stern discipline. And yet more stern determination. The sternness of his determination originated from an exceptional reason. Together with his wife Cyla, the Wiesenthal couple lost 89 members of their families in the Shoah. But even if one, I always thought, even if one. For all and every of us whose families lived through that never ending pain. In the case of the Wiesenthals, that lost world of a close, family-related soul should be multiplied eighty nine times. I was trying to imagine . Still do. My husband and I do have many personal losses because of the crimes of the Shoah in our both families. Every life is a world. A universe. Austrian-born corporal must be striving to race with the highest power in his vicious zeal to command destinies. And all those millions of his followers in different countries who were so enthusiastic to hunt the Jews. Continue Reading…