Of Silence and Sunflowers: a a Response to Simon Wisenthal's Question in “the Sunflower”

When it comes to the topic of Simon Wiesenthal not forgiving a dying SS soldier for his crimes, most of us will readily agree that it’s a debatable topic. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of if Wiesenthal should have forgiven the soldier. Whereas some are convinced that he made the right choice in not forgiving the soldier, others maintain that he should have let the soldier die peacefully, guilt free, and forgiven. I agree with Wiesenthal’s decision to not forgive the dying SS soldier because he cannot speak for all the other Jews who have been killed by this man. In Simon Wiesenthal’s book, The Sunflower, he asks the reader what they would have done in his position with the SS soldier. If I was Wiesenthal, I wouldn’t have forgiven the man as I cannot make decisions for others and because the soldier was not sincere in his apology for the crimes he was involved in.

Everyone has moments in their life where they wish they would have done something differently. For example, I wish I would have studied for a hard test more or my brother may wish that he did not run on wet tile and break his hand. Many of these things are personal cause and effects. Most of the time you know what you should or should not be doing at the time of the certain action. In the book The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal, the author asks the reader to explore what they would have done if a nazi asked for forgiveness on their deathbed. What makes Wiesenthal’s situation different from ours is that his pain or for lack of better words suffering was out of his control and the person who controlled it is asking him for forgiveness. What

Simon Wiesenthal was born in Poland, December 31, 1908. Simon was a Jew trapped in 7 different concentration camps. He drew pictures of what he saw to recount the horror. Simon was liberated in May 5, 1945. Simon started a club/program to bring Nazis to justice. His main target was Adolf Eichmann; a Nazi who wanted to kill all the Jew’s and used little kids for lab experiments. Simon located him in Argentina. Adolf Eichmann was at trial and pleaded he was not guilty. After the trial Simon wrote a book about Eichmann. Simon didn’t spend time with his daughter since he was

In Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, he recounts his incidence of meeting a dying Nazi soldier who tells Simon that he was responsible for the death of his family. Upon telling Simon the details, Karl asks for his forgiveness for what he helped accomplish. Simon leaves Karl without giving him an answer. This paper will argue that, even though Karl admits to killing Simon’s family in the house, Simon is morally forbidden to forgive Karl because Karl does not seem to show genuine remorse for his committed crime and it is not up to Simon to be able to forgive Karl for his sins. This stand will be supported by the meaning of forgiveness, evidence from the memoir, quotes from the published responses to Simon’s moral question, and arguments from

The idea of justice should be based on the idea of forgiveness. A popular attempt at achieve justice is to “forgive and forget”, however this idea is not the best method. To forgive means to recognize that someone has done something wrong and is attempting to fix it, and in turn, you must accept this attempt in order to move forward. Holding grudges is a part of the Human Condition in the sense that we struggle to get over instances of people wronging us, instead of getting over it, we deeply desire revenge. However this is something that we must move past in order to reach true justice.

In all actuality is forgiveness more of a resolution for one person to move forward, or does it fix the situation as a whole. The Sunflower, is a book that presents an idea of forgiveness and others opinions on what should happen in this case of events. Karl a dying SS man, brings in Simon a prisoner in a concentration camp to his hospital room, and asks Simon for forgiveness. Karl is guilt ridden for his killings during his time as a soldier, and wants to die confessing and seeking forgiveness from Simon. Simon however has never known Karl before their meeting, and Karl has never committed anything towards Simon. Simon struggles and is indecisive on whether he should forgive Karl or not. Saying sorry for murdering people during the Holocaust, is impossible given the damage of the event, but for Karl he searched for forgiveness through Simon. Simon being imprisoned in a concentration camp and brought to Karl, a dying SS man, Karl wanted to seek forgiveness for his actions. Being in the position Simon was in he was not entitled to take the apology on behalf of others, when he was not wronged against by Karl.

The soldier had asked the nurse to bring Simon to him because he felt the need to share his crimes with a Jewish person. He tells Simon, “I must tell you something dreadful… something inhuman”(Wiesenthal, 11). He shows remorse by calling his crime dreadful and inhuman, and all he wants is to tell Simon his story and be forgiven. The soldier is heavily wounded, and his face is covered in bandages. He tells Simon about how his own parents didn’t trust him as a child because he joined the Hitler youth. Even if his parents didn’t agree with what he was doing, they should always be able to trust their own son. When the war began, he volunteered for the SS, and the last words he heard his father say were that no good would come of it. He is truly a man deserving of pity in his final days.

Opponents argue that forgiving someone who has committed a crime would be one of the toughest things to do for a person. They believe it would be very difficult to forgive soldiers for what they had done because they people they killed were part of their friends and family. How can they forgive someone who was so beloved to them. In the book, "The Sunflower" Sven Alkalaj argues that we don't have the right to forgive a person on someone else's behalf. For example, Simon couldn't forgive Karl because he killed someone else’s family member. Karl did not have the right to forgive on behalf of those families. As a result, Simon left the room without saying any word to Karl because Simon knew that Karl committed crimes and also asking the wrong

In other words if Karl wanted to be forgiven, he then must ask the Jews, who were killed, for absolution. "But who was to forgive him? I? Nobody had empowered me to do so...I have no power to forgive him in the name of other people..." said Mr. Wiesenthal (The Sunflower 82). However, Karl seemed like treating Mr. Wiesenthal as a representative of Jews. He wished forgiveness from a member of Jews community and that 's enough for him to leave the world in peace. Those Jews who were killed would not be able to answer Karl. So it must depend on people who are still alive to grant forgiveness for Karl. Death is the end; a murderer is human. Let me forgive the dying repented soldier so he could rest in peace.

In the book Rediscovering the Power of Repentance and Forgiveness, Dr. Leah Coulter seeks to challenge the conventional Christian approach to forgiveness. Conventional Christianity approaches forgiveness as a Christian duty, and, in many ways, this has been unfair to the victims who have almost been condemned for seeking justice rather than simply forgetting. She asks, "From an all too common Christian view, why must the weight and responsibility of forgiveness be placed on the sinned-against instead of the sinner's repentance?" (Coulter). Therefore, she focuses extensively on the idea of repentance and the duty of the sinner to repent. However, that is not to suggest that Coulter abandons the idea that forgiveness is a Christian imperative, but she attempts to place it within its Jewish context, and demonstrate how other facets of historical Judaism inform the practice of forgiveness and repentance.

The Holocaust was a genocide that occured from 1933-1945, and one of its survivors was Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal was an architect before he was captured by the Nazis. After he was set free, he dedicated his life to finding Nazi war criminals and persecuting them in court. Later on in his life, he wrote a memoir, The Sunflower. It was about one of his many experiences at the Lemberg concentration camp where he got roped in to listening to a dynig SS soldier, Karl. Right before, Wiesenthal leaves Karl’s room, Karl asks for Wiesenthal, on behalf of all the Jews he persecuted, for forgiveness. Wiesenthal left Karl’s room without forgiving him, and then asks the readers, “ What would I have done?” At the end of The Sunflower, people who Wiesenthal picked to respond to his question, had their answers published. The most interesting response was Jose Hobday’s. Hobday believed that Wiesenthal should have apologized to Karl because it would have given Karl a sense of peace, making it easier for him to pass on. Hobday has the correct answer to Wiesenthal’s question because even though all of the Jews that Karl persecuted are dead and will not be able to apologize to him in person, Karl just wants someone to know that he is sorry for his actions.

The Holocaust was a genocide that occurred from 1933-1945, and one of its survivors was Simon Wiesenthal. After he was set free from the concentration camp, he dedicated his life to finding Nazi war criminals and persecuting them in court. Later on in his life, he wrote a memoir, The Sunflower. It was about one of his many experiences at the Lemberg concentration camp where he got roped into listening to a dying SS soldier, Karl. Right before Wiesenthal left Karl’s room, Karl asked Wiesenthal, on behalf of all the Jews he persecuted, for forgiveness. Wiesenthal left Karl’s room without forgiving him, and then asked his readers, “What would I have done?” At the end of The Sunflower, people who Wiesenthal picked to respond to his question, had their answers published. The most interesting response was Jose Hobday’s. Hobday believed that Wiesenthal should have forgiven to Karl because it would have given Karl a sense of peace, making it easier for him to pass on. Hobday had the correct answer to Wiesenthal’s question because even though all of the Jews that Karl persecuted are dead and will not be able to forgive him in person, Karl just wanted someone to know that he was sorry for his actions.

Forgive and forget - the motto that is ingrained in all of us from childhood, teaching us to be more compassionate and understanding, and ultimately developing us into better people, right? Perhaps not. While forgiveness is undoubtedly an important trait that enables people to overcome conflicts, where do we draw the line? There are no concrete or established rules on what the acceptable number of times to forgive someone or something is, so how can we define what is too much forgiveness? When does forgiveness go from a sign of your maturity, compassion, and strength, to a sign of your subservience and weakness? How can we be forgiving and thoughtful, without jeopardizing our own self-worth? These are all questions that arise in the memoir

If someone were to partake in the murdering of your own kind, would you be able to forgive them? That is the question that Simon Wiesenthal must ask himself in the story The Sunflower , a book about pain and forgiveness. The Sunflower follows Simon as he listens to Karl, a former SS officer, confess and ultimately beg for forgiveness for the war crimes he committed. It pits Simon against a very difficult situation and even makes the reader consider what they would do. So, from reading The Sunflower and all of the supplemental essays, I can come to the conclusion that I do believe that the Soldier should be forgiven because he was brainwashed by propaganda and felt strong regret for his actions.

The conversation between Wiesenthal and Bolek is another example of forgiveness is necessary. When Wiesenthal tells Bolek of what he experienced in the dying SS man’s room, Bolek says he describes it as a man who showed signs of “repentance, genuine, sincere repentance” (Wiesenthal 82). He means that Wiesenthal believes the dying SS man’s apology was sincere. He believes that Wiesenthal seen his apology as genuine and that he deserved the “mercy of forgiveness” (Wiesenthal 82). Wiesenthal spots a sunflower behind a bush, he takes it as the sunflower has come to “remind [him]” (Wiesenthal 84) of what he describes as a “feeling of duty” (Wiesenthal 84). Wiesenthal “duty” (Wiesenthal 85) and his planning on visiting the mother of the deceased SS man show that he is beginning to realize that he needs to come to terms with his experienced at the hospital in Lemberg. He visits her for closure and ultimately to decide within himself if he should finally forgive the man responsible for the murder of hundreds of innocent Jewish people.