Talk:Simon Wiesenthal/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 13:32, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review. In the next few days, I'll do a close readthrough of the article, noting any initial issues here, and then move to the criteria checklist. Thanks in advance for your work on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:32, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! -- Dianna (talk) 16:16, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Initial readthrough
This is really an excellent article. I see almost no problems on my first pass, and the prose carried me along enough that I had to stop and remind myself to read critically. I anticipate this being a pretty speedy pass. I only had a few comments and suggestions:


 * Consider adding a direct statement to the lead and/or early life statement that the Wiesenthals were Jewish; it's clearly implied from the beginning (and explicit later on), but definitions of the Holocaust vary to include other groups, so it's not explicit immediately. It seems easier to make it explicit from the beginning.
 * You might make the Waldheim affair clearer in the lead; it seems worth a full sentence to do this if necessary. On reading the lead, I assumed SW had exposed Waldheim.
 * " continued to try to locate missing Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, Franz Stangl, and others." -- this makes it sound like SW didn't necessarily succeed; I'd suggest adding a sentence or two to make his successes clear in the lead. I have clarified the two cases that are directly mentioned in the lead.
 * Nice work making the differing versions of SW's life explicit.
 * "Assistance involved arranging for forged papers, food supplies, transportation, and so on" -- Wiesenthal's assistance, or assistance to these refugees generally? clarified
 * " located many Nazi war criminals, about six of whom were arrested as a result of his activities. " -- How are war criminals being defined here, if they weren't arrested or convicted? Were they convicted in absentia by a previous or later court? Or are these individuals that Wiesenthal himself suspected or knew to be guilty? I don't mean to be over legalistic, but this might need slight rephrasing for clarity. (Or perhaps a footnote?)
 * Many suspects were located but not all were brought to trial. I will make it clearer that they were suspects only. Interest in pursuing convictions decreased sharply with the start of the Cold War, for political reasons. I have fleshed this out a bit.
 * "Wiesenthal was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, but lost out to Elie Wiesel, likely because of the negative publicity he received as a result of the Waldheim affair." -- I'll defer to your source, of course, but I'm a bit skeptical of this phrasing. A huge number of people are nominated for the Nobel Peace prize each year, and of course few win; is there reason to believe SW was a frontrunner?
 * I will re-phrase this as Segev's opinion.
 * Okay, I read the original source on Google Books (though some pages were missing, of course). Perhaps you might mention the angle that it was the 40th anniversary of the end of WWII, and the Nobel Committee was thought to be looking for a Holocaust-related laureate; it seems also worth mentioning that Wiesenthal was actively campaigning for the prize. The article isn't overlong (31kb readable prose), so it seems to me that adding a few more sentences here about his Nobel Prize run wouldn't hurt. I'm fine with deferring to your judgement on this, though. -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:19, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * We certainly have space for a couple more sentences on this topic. It looks like Wiesel did even more lobbying than Wiesenthal.


 * That's a great detail about his stamp collection--nice humanizing touch to the article.
 * "Ben Kingsley portrayed him in the Home Box Office film Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story" -- if Ben Kingsley is playing him, does this belong in the paragraph on documentaries? IMDB makes this sound more like a biopic.
 * Unfortunately I have not seen the film so I can't say. But HBO stuff is usually high quality, and IMdB is not considered a reliable source, so I think it's best to leave it as-is.
 * Do we have a source calling it a documentary, though? The given source puts it in the same list as Boys from Brazil, which leaves it ambiguous. The Kingsley pic appears to have been nominated for awards in fiction categories rather than documentary ones, and reading a few reviews on Highbeam it sounds like a biopic, though nobody quite says directly. Unless a source calling this a doc is available, perhaps it could just be moved to the previous paragraph, which deals with portrayals by actors? Regardless of what genre it was classified as, it seems like Kingsley's portrayal of SW is the major focus of the film.
 * Okay, I understand your point better now and will move it to the other paragraph.
 * Though obvious guesses can be made, it would be interesting to have a quotation or two from SW explicitly discussing his motives in dedicating his life to Nazi hunting, or what he saw as the importance of the work. (I'm not sure the article has any direct quotations from SW, actually.) This isn't needed for the GA criteria, but I was curious about it as a reader.

Since this is so close to a pass already, I'll go ahead and start the checklist. -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:53, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * "After members of Mengele's family admitted to authorities in 1985 that he had died, the body was exhumed and his identity was confirmed." -- you might make it clearer that Mengele had apparantly been dead for six years; it wasn't clear to me until I looked at the Segev source that this was a case of SW being wrong for several years. -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:00, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Khazar2! I believe I have covered all the concerns listed above. Please let me know if you find any further work that needs attention. Thank you for these great suggestions, which have made the article better. -- Dianna (talk) 19:01, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Good Job Diannaa. Wayne (talk) 02:41, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks Wayne ! -- Dianna (talk) 03:40, 14 January 2013 (UTC)