Nazi hunter's stamp collection to go under the hammer

AFP, September, 2006

BERLIN (AFP) — The stamp collection of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who died last year, is expected to fetch 350,000 euros (445,000 dollars) when it is auctioned in the German city of Wiesbaden. Wiesenthal, who dedicated his life to tracking down Nazi war criminals after he survived internment in a concentration camp, started collecting stamps in the 1950s on the advice of his doctor who suggested it would help cure his sleeplessness.

His passion for stamps helped him to catch Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the transport of Jews to death camps in eastern Europe. Information passed to Wiesenthal from friends in the world of philately led investigators to Argentina, where Eichmann was captured in 1960 by the Israeli secret services Mossad. He was executed two years later....