Jewish Historical Documentation Centre

The Jewish Historical Documentation Centre (Zentrum für jüdische historische Dokumentation) was an office headed by Simon Wiesenthal in Linz.

When his association with the United States Army ended in 1947, Wiesenthal and thirty volunteers opened the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Linz, Austria, for the purpose of assembling evidence for future trials.

However, as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union intensified, both sides lost interest in prosecuting Germans, and Wiesenthal's volunteers, succumbing to frustration, drifted away to more ordinary pursuits.

[2] In 1959, acting on information provided by Wiesenthal and other Nazi hunters, Eichmann was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina, transported to Israel where he was tried and executed.

[2] The centre in Vienna was housed in a nondescript, sparsely furnished three-room office in Vienna's old Jewish quarter[3] with a staff of four, including Wiesenthal[2] The centre had open files on about 2,000 cases, however, Wiesenthal estimated that about 150,000 Nazis were involved in war crimes and that his office's extensive archives were just "the tip of the iceberg".