This first fully documented biography of SimonWiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, is also a brilliantcharacter study of a man whose life was part invention but whollydedicated to ensuring both that the Nazis be held responsible fortheir crimes and that the destruction of European Jewry never beforgotten. Like most Jews in Eastern Europe on the eve ofHitler’s invasion of Poland, twenty-four-year-old Simon Wiesenthaldid not grasp the nature of the Nazi threat. But six years later,when a skeletal Wiesenthal was liberated from the concentrationcamp at Mauthausen, he fully fathomed the crimes of the Nazis.Within days he had assembled a list of nearly 150 Nazi warcriminals, the first of dozens of such lists he would make over alifetime as a Nazi hunter. A hero in the eyes of many, Wiesenthalwas also attacked for his unrelenting pursuit of the past, whenothers preferred to forget. For this new biography, rich in newsworthy revelations, historianand journalist Tom Segev has obtained access to Wiesenthal’s
Through never-before-seen photographs and intriguing personaldiaries, this beautiful book provides an intimate glimpse into thelives of Countess Sophia Tolstoy and her husband, Leo Tolstoy—oneof the greatest authors of all time—set against the grand andterrifying backdrop of aristocratic Russia on the brink of itsdemise. Between 1885 and 1910, Countess Tolstoy made more than a thousandphotographs representing her entire world—from artists toaristocrats to peasants to family, from the Crimea to Moscow to thefamily estate 100 kilometers to the south. She also kept detaileddiaries, which sweep us into fashionable balls and localgossip...magical scenes of winter in Russia...and devastatingfamine in the countryside. Sophia's works deepen our understandingof the era as well as of this amazing woman, who had thirteenchildren, battled a troubled marriage, and, though blessed with acreative life of her own, was so devoted to her husband's careerthat she hand-copied his great works Anna Karenina and War andPeac