I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal

"I Have Never Forgotten You -- the Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal" (Richard Trank, USA, 2006, 105 minutes) is the unwieldy title of a truly fascinating documentary which might just as well (in fact much more aptly) have been called "Simon Wiesenthal -- Tracer of Lost Nazis" -- or just plain "Nazi Hunter". Wiesenthal died in Vienna in 2004 at age 90 plus, a lifetime during which he survived the Holocaust, then spent the rest of his life relentlessly tracking down escaped Nazi war criminals in order to bring them to so-called 'justice'. His most famous catch was Adolph Eichmann, whom he traced all the way to Argentina, then had him kidnapped by the Mossad and brought back to Israel to stand trial for his part in implementing the German "Final Solution" -- the mass murder of the European Jews. The film traces Wiesenthal's entire life from the Ukraine to the camps to post-war Vienna, and what emerges -- oddly -- is not the picture of a vengeful Jewish James Bond -- but quite the contrary -- a mild mannered middle-aged man with a mission in life which he quietly pursued in order to set things as "right' as they could ever be set. In later years in Vienna, where he had chosen to settle with his wife after the war, he was often grossly lambasted by the shamelessly Neo-Nazi Austrian media, to the point where his wife urged him to leave. But Wiesenthal decided it was here, in the eye of the revisionist denial storm, that he had to stick to his guns even though he was very much a Persona non Grata. (In the film he speaks in German most of the time). But the film ends on an upbeat note when he is greatly honored at a Vienna synagogue in this horribly hypocritical anti-Semitic city on his ninetieth birthday. Well, Simon finally had the last laugh, but this film is no laughing matter -- simply a blow-by-blow account of one of the strangest lives of the XXth century. Not to be missed.

The documentary, "I Have Never Forgotten You," explores the life and legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, the concentration camp survivor who became known as the "Conscience of the Holocaust" for his tireless efforts at tracking down Nazi war criminals and for making sure that the memory of that shameful event would - as the title declares - never be forgotten.

Written and directed by Richard Trank and narrated (very effectively) by Nicole Kidman, "I Have Never Forgotten You" is a moving tribute to a man who turned an inconceivable personal tragedy - the loss of nearly 90 of his own family members, along with millions of fellow Jews and countrymen to the Nazi death machine - into a lifelong search for justice. And, indeed, it was this compelling need to see justice done - rather than any sense of personal vengeance - that motivated Wiesenthal's actions. Luckily for Trank, Wiesenthal, who died at the age of 96 in 2005, left behind a treasure trove of interviews for the director to cull from in composing his portrait of the man. Thus, thanks to the miracle of film, we have Wiesenthal's relating the story of his life in his own words, often with tears welling up in his eyes. We learn of his childhood growing up in Buchach, his early days at school, his budding career as an architect. Then came the dark years of the Nazi horror as he was shipped from one concentration camp to another until he was finally rescued, on the brink of death, by the Americans at Mauthausen. Almost immediately upon his liberation, Wiesenthal realized that he could never return to any semblance of a "normal" life, and, thus, dedicated himself to tracking down those responsible for the holocaust, many of whom - most notably, Adolph Eichmann, the "architect" of The Final Solution - had long since fled to the Americas (mainly Brazil, Argentina and Chile), where they were leading lives of peaceful anonymity under assumed names.

Perhaps his greatest legacy has come in the form of the Simon Weisenthal Center, an organization dedicated to not only preserving the memory of the holocaust for future generations but fighting to eradicate racism, bigotry and prejudice wherever they may rear their ugly heads in the world (Weisenthal was the first person to honor all the non-Jews - i.e. gypsies, homosexuals - who likewise perished in the camps). It is through the efforts of an organization such as this one that any future genocides and holocausts can, hopefully, be averted.

"I Have Never Forgotten You" offers not only a compelling story of a man's life but a fascinating glimpse into the history of the 20th Century, with much of the Nazi-hunting scenarios containing all the suspense and excitement of good detective fiction. Yet, the movie doesn't sugarcoat its subject. It gives voice to some of the people who had challenged Weisenthal over the years, mainly on some of the methods he had employed in tracking down Nazis (interestingly, some felt he had been too relentless, others not relentless enough).

Yet, Weisenthal never saw himself as a hero and intensely disliked having that label applied to him. He always knew that he was just an ordinary man forced to live an extraordinary life by virtue of the role fate had mapped out for him. Haunted by what he had seen and experienced in the death camps, he knew he would never be able to live at ease with his conscience if he had turned his back on the millions of less fortunate individuals who didn't make it out alive and would otherwise have no other voice to speak for them. Thus, despite his own personal modesty and all his protestations to the contrary, he was an extraordinary and inspirational man by any possible measure, a true giant among men. This moving documentary does full justice both to the man and to the giant.

I Have Never Forgotten You, a documentary on Wiesenthal, is broken down into two parts that essentially blend together as one: the personal and professional. On the personal side of things, Wiesenthal came from a small Polish (or what was Russian and then again Polish) village, which today likely no longer exists, and after going through the loss of a father and a brother before the second world war lost everyone in his family during the holocaust. Only his wife survived, and somehow the two of them found each other again after it ended, which led to their child. But the personal side of Wiesenthal, of the anger and sadness of what was basically the more horrifying experience imaginable over the course of half a decade, soon went into the professional, and any hope he had of being an architect from his early years fell to the wayside, hence bringing out his legacy: *the* eminent Nazi-hunter of if not the world then at least Europe. By the time his later years came around- and later being his late 80s and early 90s- he was even being honored by the country he had made his place of operations, Austria, which had been a bittersweet connection.

His is one of those truly inspiring stories of the human spirit, all cliché aside, as he was full of humility but not an unjust man in the slightest. And the cost to bear, for him anyway, was too much to bear to give up if things got ugly (and, at times, it did, with protesters even fire-bombing his home and office of operations). At the same time we're shown Wiesenthal to be a man capable of great humor; I liked the part where the woman recounts Wiesenthal as a man with a joke to tell, sometimes not always appropriately for women's ears. Little details about Wiesenthal's balancing of his family life with his constant, unwavering attention to assisting in the capture of Nazi war criminals (he called himself a "researcher" in an interview) are maybe the most compelling, the kind of little biographical bits that one might overlook in the usual biographies. Nevertheless, if there is a main flaw to the film it's that the director does put a little of the sentiment on high with the music and some calculated ways to go about telling the story (nothing PBS wouldn't do, perhaps, though it doesn't necessarily rise the documentary to great art).

This being said, it's a very worthy testament to a man who, as Ben Kingsley noted, said all there needed to be said about what he had experienced in the gesture of his hand brushing against his face out of the burden that he faced, not even as a "hero", which Wiesenthal denies he was, but as a "survivor" which wiped out dozens of members of his closest family along with millions of others in the holocaust. In short, anyone who has an interest in what he was about would do well to see it, and even to those who contributed to the Wiesenthal group over the years may find out a thing or two not previously known.

"I Have Never Forgotten You -- the Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal" (Richard Trank, USA, 2006, 105 minutes)

This is the unwieldy title of a truly fascinating documentary which might just as well (in fact much more aptly) have been called "Simon Wiesenthal -- Tracer of Lost Nazis" -- or just plain "Nazi Hunter". Wiesenthal died in Vienna in 2004 at age 90 plus, a lifetime during which he survived the Holocaust, then spent the rest of his life relentlessly tracking down escaped Nazi war criminals in order to bring them to so-called 'justice'. His most famous catch was Adolph Eichmann, whom he traced all the way to Argentina, then had him kidnapped by the Mossad and brought back to Israel to stand trial for his part in implementing the German "Final Solution" -- the mass murder of the European Jews. The film traces Wiesenthal's entire life from the Ukraine to the camps to post-war Vienna, and what emerges -- oddly -- is not the picture of a vengeful Jewish James Bond -- but quite the contrary -- a mild mannered middle-aged man with a mission in life which he quietly pursued in order to "set things right" ~~ as much as ever they could be set. In later years in Vienna, where he had chosen to settle with his wife after the war, he was often grossly lambasted by the shamelessly Neo-Nazi Austrian media, to the point where his wife urged him to leave. But Wiesenthal decided it was here, in the eye of the revisionist denial storm, that he had to stick to his guns even though he was very much a Persona non Grata. (In the film he speaks in German most of the time). But the film ends on an upbeat note when he is greatly honored at a Vienna synagogue in this horribly hypocritical anti-Semitic city on his ninetieth birthday. Well, Simon finally had the last laugh, but this film is no laughing matter -- simply a blow-by-blow account of one of the strangest lives of the XXth century. Not to be missed. Narrated by actress Nicole Kidman. Viewed at 2007 Seattle film festival.