Justice, Not Vengeance

Since the end of World War II Wiesenthal has dedicated his life to bringing Nazis to justice. In this book he describes his activities, the men, such as Eichmann and Mengele, he has pursued, the Nazi escape organization, Odessa, but also some of the heroism that the horrors produced. The book asks questions about the function of punishment and the possibility of rehabilitation in such extreme cases of criminality. He shows that many of the most sadistic persecutors of the Nazi regime found it all too easy to merge into normal society and assume a cloak of decency. Wiesenthal's aim has been to expose to the fullest possible extent the hypocritical sham of this normalization which, he believes, incubates the anti-semitism of which the Nazi regime was the most barbaric manifestation.