The Simon Wiesenthal Center

The Man Who Would Not Forget

When the Allied forces liberated the Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945, among the emaciated survivors was a Polish-Jewish architect named Simon Wiesenthal. He weighed less than 100 pounds. He had survived five different camps. Eighty-nine members of his and his wife’s families had been murdered.

Most survivors wanted to rebuild their lives, to forget the horrors, to look forward. Wiesenthal chose a different path. He would spend the next sixty years hunting the men who had committed those horrors — tracking down Nazi war criminals who had escaped justice, disappeared into new identities, and slipped into comfortable post-war lives in South America, the Middle East, and even Western Europe.

“When history looks back,” Wiesenthal said, “I want people to know the Nazis weren’t able to kill millions of people and get away with it.”

Founding the Center

The Simon Wiesenthal Center was established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier in Los Angeles. Named with Wiesenthal’s endorsement, the Center expanded beyond Nazi-hunting to become a broad-based human rights organization with a particular focus on combating antisemitism, promoting tolerance, and preserving the memory of the Holocaust.

Rabbi Hier’s vision was to create an institution that would connect the lessons of the Holocaust to contemporary issues of prejudice, hatred, and human rights. The result was an organization that combines historical education with cutting-edge monitoring of extremism and international advocacy.

The Museum of Tolerance

The Center’s flagship achievement is the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, opened in 1993. Unlike traditional museums, the Museum of Tolerance is designed as an experiential journey. Visitors do not merely view exhibits — they participate in them.

The museum’s Holocaust section guides visitors through a chronological recreation of the events of 1933-1945, using artifacts, photographs, film footage, and interactive technology. Each visitor receives a “passport” card bearing the identity of a real child who lived during the Holocaust. At the journey’s end, they learn whether “their” child survived.

The Tolerancenter section addresses contemporary prejudice — racism, homophobia, bullying, and other forms of hatred. Interactive exhibits challenge visitors to examine their own biases and assumptions.

Over five million people have visited the Museum of Tolerance, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren and tens of thousands of law enforcement officers who undergo sensitivity training programs there.

Hunting Nazis — and Their Legacy

Following in Wiesenthal’s footsteps, the Center has maintained an active program to identify and bring to justice surviving Nazi war criminals. Through its office in Jerusalem headed by Efraim Zuroff (often called “the last Nazi hunter”), the Center has pursued cases against aging perpetrators who had evaded accountability for decades.

The pursuit is partly pragmatic — ensuring that mass murder does not go permanently unpunished — and partly symbolic. As Wiesenthal argued, justice delayed is not the same as justice denied. Even decades later, holding perpetrators accountable sends a message about the consequences of participation in genocide.

The Center has also tracked and documented the activities of contemporary hate groups, neo-Nazi movements, and Holocaust deniers. Its annual Digital Terrorism and Hate report catalogs online extremism across platforms and countries, providing data used by law enforcement, tech companies, and policymakers.

International Advocacy

The Simon Wiesenthal Center holds consultative status at the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, and UNESCO. Its representatives advocate for Holocaust education, religious freedom, and the protection of Jewish communities worldwide.

Notable advocacy efforts have included campaigns to prevent the construction of commercial developments on sites of former concentration camps, lobbying for the opening of wartime archives, and challenging Holocaust distortion at international institutions.

The Center has also been active in digital advocacy, pressuring social media companies to remove antisemitic content and extremist propaganda from their platforms.

Education Programs

Beyond the Museum of Tolerance, the Center operates extensive educational programs:

Tools for Tolerance: Professional development programs for law enforcement officers, educators, and corporate leaders, focusing on diversity, bias awareness, and ethical decision-making.

Moriah Films: The Center’s film division has produced two Academy Award-winning documentaries: Genocide (1981) and The Long Way Home (1997).

Research and Publications: The Center publishes reports on antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and extremism, providing resources for journalists, researchers, and policymakers.

Wiesenthal’s Legacy

Simon Wiesenthal died in 2005 at the age of ninety-six, having spent sixty years in pursuit of justice. The Center that bears his name carries forward his essential insight: that memory without action is insufficient, and that the fight against hatred requires not only remembrance but vigilance.

“For your benefit, learn from our tragedy,” Wiesenthal wrote. “It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jewish.” The Center translates this warning into practical action — monitoring, educating, advocating, and refusing to let the world forget what happens when hatred goes unchallenged.