Wiesenthal
Ayers House State Dining Room
Thu 26 Feb, 2026

“I love people but I don’t trust them.”

So said Simon Wiesenthal as he welcomed us to the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre. A Holocaust survivor of multiple concentration camps, the real Simon Wiesenthal died in 2005 at the age of 96, having spent a lifetime chasing down Nazi war criminals. He sought justice for the 11 million people who died at the hands of the Nazis. It is notable that Wiesenthal was not exclusively concerned with the fate of the 6 million Jews eliminated by the Nazis; his focus was all groups that suffered: Armenians, Poles, Lithuanians and others included.

Wiesenthal amassed files on 22,000 individuals but only a fraction of these were ever brought to trial. It is inevitable in a show like this that one is confronted with a lot of gruesome detail. Early on it felt much like one of the countless documentaries one can view on SBS about the Nazi horror story. But it becomes more personal as Wiesenthal reveals information he gathered along the way from people he knew or had contacted him. He refers to the ongoing frustration he felt when confronted with the reluctance of authorities to assist in chasing down war criminals after the war was over. On this, his last day before retirement, he is still on the phone trying to track down the whereabouts of yet another possible offender, only to be once again fobbed off.

His tireless efforts did yield some major successes: Eichmann was located in Argentina and sent to trial. Franz Stangl, the commandant at Treblinka, was found living in Brazil and eventually imprisoned in Germany.

What is also sadly clear from Wiesenthal’s account is that many of the Nazi perpetrators had little sense of remorse. “Just doing my duty.”  they said.

As he prepares to leave his office for the last time he worries about who will continue the quest to find justice for the 11 million dead. Is there anyone he can trust? But he is also looking forward to telling his wife he has “finally come home from the war. “

This is a moving and harrowing experience, played to perfection by Christopher Gibbs. But, beyond the faithful who come to see this remarkable show, you do wonder if anyone is really listening.