Simon Wiesenthal knighted

2004-06-18 21:43

London - Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal was to receive an honorary knighthood at his home in Vienna on Friday in recognition of a "lifetime of service to humanity," the British embassy in Austria said.

Ukrainian-born Wiesenthal, 95, was too old and unwell to travel to London to receive the honour from Queen Elizabeth II. It would instead be bestowed upon him by British Ambassador John Macgregor during a private ceremony for family and friends, the embassy said.

Wiesenthal was recommended for a knighthood in February by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who said at the time that he had been "untiring in his service to the Jewish communities in the UK and elsewhere by helping to right at least some of the awful wrongs of the Holocaust."

As he is not a British citizen, Wiesenthal cannot call himself "Sir Simon" but he will be able to add the letters KBE ("Knight Commander of the British Empire") to his name.

Wiesenthal was freed by American soldiers from the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen in May 1945, but dozens of his family members, among them his mother, stepfather and stepbrother died in the Nazi genocide.

He founded the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna two years after the end of the war and in 1977 set up the Simon Wiesenthal Centre to fight bigotry and anti-Semitism worldwide.

Straw paid tribute in February to the Centre's work in "preserving the memory of the Holocaust and fostering tolerance and understanding, ideals that are more relevant than ever in the present day".

Wiesenthal played an important part in helping the Israeli secret service track down Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Nazis' "Final Solution" - the extermination of Europe's Jewish population. Eichmann was arrested in Argentina, tried in Israel and executed in 1961.

- AFP