PressEthic

One of the first things I heard on the radio this morning, and WNYC takes an hour of broadcast from the BBC's World Service, was that Weisenthal had died. This name may not immediately strike you as familiar, but to many people in Europe and America he represented the last living reminder of Nazi atrocities.

Weisenthal devoted a significant portion of his life to tracking down Nazi partymembers and colloborators who had been involved in the death camps established in Europe during the 1940s. As a death camp survivor he had an obvious motivation for such work, to ensure that these men and women were brought to trial, rather than escaping censure following the end of the war. WW2 has proved unusual in the incredibly lengthy, public and sustained campaign waged by victims and their descendants seeking restitution for Nazi crimes.

Yet Weisenthal did not represent these plaintiffs as a lawyer would in a class action suit. Nor did he work for any financial incentives, despite the enormous scale of financial embezzlement practised by the Nazi regime, some of which is still to be restored; see this CNN story for some background. It was often despite death threats to himself and his family that he continued his investigations. His zeal must be admired, even if some of his techniques came into question. He worked both with and despite certain governments, and was the recipient of numerous international awards.

Weisenthal employed many of the skills which are ascribed to investigative journalists. Fact-finding, interviewing sources, "joining the dots" all featured in his work. Yet the man who advised on The Odessa File and was played by Laurence Olivier in "The Boys from Brazil" would shy away from such a denomination. He used numerous anonymous sources however, and these on many occasions had an agenda in furnishing him with accusatory details. Weisenthal did not employ balance, though arguably there is no "other side" to the story of Nazi atrocities. No ordinary "journalist" would ever devote 40 plus years to a single "story", but Weisenthal's crusade represents, in my view, one of the most admirable single person achievements in the history of investigative journalism.