Simon Wiesenthal spent four and a half years in Mauthausen concentration camp during World War II. With the exception of his wife, all his immediate family were exterminated, and he himself ended the war a living skeleton.

Since then, he has achieved international reknown for his tireless and successful tracking down of Nazi war criminals, including notorious figures such as Eichmann, the 'desk murderer' who masterminded Hitler's Final Solution; Stangl the overlord of Treblinka; and the Mengele of Auschwitz, the dreaded 'Angel of Death'.

To this day his work continues, his motivation simply expressed in the words: 'Justice, not vengeance'. This work provides an account of Wiesenthal's inspired detective work.