Lots of obituaries this week of the great Nazi-hunter, Simon Wiesenthal (for example here and here), but the most striking one was in the Economist. It included this story:

One of the stranger conversations in Simon Wiesenthal’s life occurred in September 1944. He was being taken by SS guards, in his faded striped uniform, away from the advancing Russians. Somewhere in the middle of Poland, he and an SS corporal scavenged together for potatoes. What, the corporal asked him mockingly, would he tell someone in America about the death camps? Mr Wiesenthal said he would tell the truth. “They wouldn’t believe you,” the corporal replied.