"The concentration camp guards stood with their rifles ready, awaiting the order to fire at Simon Wiesenthal and other prisoners standing along the edge of a pit where their bodies would topple. The future Nazi hunter waited to die. And waited.   Hours later, after many of the condemned slumped in exhaustion, the camp commandant strolled to the line and delivered a reprieve: Soviet troops were coming and the prisoners would be taken away..."

he survived, he lost 89 members of his family, and vowed not to forget. as he said,

"If we ignore the past, if we distort or deny what happened, then the past will return. Only by remembering can we and our children and their children build a just future; a future in which human life never loses its value."

this article in the Guardian tells his remarkable story -
Holocaust Survivor Simon Wiesenthal Dies