Sometime in 1942, the Nazis decided on the 'Final Solution' to what they called 'the Jewish problem' -- annihilation. A massive genocide operation was begun across occupied Europe. By September that year, Wiesenthal lost his mother and 88 other relatives to the death camps. His wife escaped. But the couple would be reunited only in 1945.
Wiesenthal escaped the death camp in 1943, but was recaptured a year later and sent to another concentration camp. He escaped death as his guards retreated along with their prisoners from the Soviet Red Army. He was held prisoner at the Mauthausen death camp in Austria until May 1945, when the Americans liberated it.
He finally had his freedom but realised, soon, that it was incomplete without justice.
The liberation of Mauthausen by Allied forces in 1945.
Photo Credit: Simon Wiesenthal Center
Also see: The war that changed the world