Monroe, NY - The dates on the program booklet handed out at Temple Beth-El in Monroe were April 24, 2006, and 26 Nissan 5766. The program that evening, which included a Ma’ariv Service and a presentation by Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the first director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, revealed much about how the Jews have survived as a people. An architect in Poland prior to World War II, Wiesenthal spent most of that war in Nazi compounds with various purposes and names such as concentration camps, labor camps and death camps. Although Wiesenthal’s life, as was the life of every other prisoner in these camps, was subject to being extinguished at any time, Zuroff said two miraculous events would influence Wiesenthal’s decision to become a post-war Nazi hunter. The first, Zuroff told the audience of about 250 people, happened when German soldiers who were in the process of killing everyone in Wiesenthal’s barrack, “stopped work early” because some entertainment had just arrived in the camp. The “work” resumed the next day, but a friend recognized Wiesenthal that evening and “got him out of the situation,” Zuroff said. The second case also involved the methodical slaying of Jews. Wiesenthal, being an architect, was good at drawing and sketching. Zuroff said for that reason, he was ordered to prepare a mural to be used as a prop for the celebration of Adolf Hitler’s birthday. When some German soldiers came for his group, Wiesenthal was left behind and told to “get back to work on the mural.” At the end of the war, Wiesenthal’s camp was liberated by American soldiers. Most of his and his wife’s relatives were dead, and he would not be reunited with his wife until the next year. Two experiences immediately after the war also moved Wiesenthal to become a Nazi hunter, Zuroff said. After liberation, the Americans left in place a Polish prisoner that the Germans had given authority within the camp. The business of the camp now involved medical treatment, prisoner identification, family unification and transportation home. The Polish camp boss, however, treated the Jews as harshly as ever. Seeing Wiesenthal, he said more with disappointment than surprise: “Simon, you’re still alive?” Wiesenthal reported this behavior to an American colonel who forced the camp boss to make a public apology. Soon thereafter Wiesenthal was contacted by three rabbis to retrieve some books and return them to their rightful place libraries, temples and schools. As Zuroff recounted, an inscription in one of the books read: “If anyone finds this Prayer Book, please give it to . They are coming now to kill us. Do not forget our murderers.” Zuroff said Wiesenthal did not usually track down or capture fugitive Nazi war criminals himself; he gathered and analyzed information. He was assisted in this by an international network of friends and sympathizers including German war veterans appalled by the horrors they witnessed. Wiesenthal is credited with ferreting out more than 1,000 of Hitler’s Nazi war criminals. His most famous, and most important, catch was Adolf Eichmann, the technocrat who supervised the “Final Solution” the near-extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Israeli agents, tried in Israel, found guilty of mass murder and executed on May 31, 1961. As a survivor, Wiesenthal believed his life has special meaning. When asked why he didn’t go back to being an architect after the war, Zuroff said Wiesenthal offered this explanation: “I believe that, after our death, we survivors will meet those who died in the camps and will be asked by them, What did you do with your life that was not taken in the Holocaust?’ I will tell them, I didn’t forget you I sought justice for you’.”