The Sunflower By Simon Wiesenthal Summary

Wiesel exemplified the dehumanization of the Jewish prisoners in Night. He showed the readers a personal view of the Nazi's treatment to the prisoners. They lost their possessions,

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.

The Holocaust, yet another unpleasant time in history tainted with the blood and suffering of man. Human beings tortured, executed and starved for hatred and radical ideas. Yet with many tragedies there are survivors, those who refused to die on another man’s command. These victims showed enormous willpower, they overcame human degradation and tragedies that not only pushed their beliefs in god, but their trust in fellow people. It was people like Elie Wiesel author of “Night”, Eva Galler,Sima Gleichgevicht-Wasser, and Solomon Radasky that survived, whose’ mental and physical capabilities were pushed to limits that are difficult to conceive. Each individual experiences were different, but their survival tales not so far-reaching to where the fundamental themes of fear, family, religion and self-preservation played a part in surviving. Although some of these themes weren’t always so useful for survival.

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

He was once kind, thoughtful, and caring of others. But, as his sufferings increased, he becomes heartless, filled with hate, and begins to abandon all that he once held dear. He stops praying early during his imprisonment, and in general becomes selfish. His only concern is himself, and how he is going to eat and survive until the next day. Once concerned about others, he is now focused on himself. Wiesel also feels “free” when his father dies, presumably because he no longer has to look out for or take care of anyone but himself. Wiesel also details another example of changing behavior in the camp, as he tells the story of a son who killed his father simply for a piece of stale bread. These and other behavioral changes describe the kind of environment Wiesel and others were exposed to in the

Captivity is a subject that has been discussed thoroughly by many people. Captivity is the main concept touched in Daniel Quinn’s novel, Ishmael, and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Plato makes the compelling argument that people are captives of the world of ignorance. Ishmael complements Plato’s allegory by agreeing that there are two groups of people, that it would be difficult to distinguish the truth, and that people are being deceived.

Vince Lombardi, an American football player, and a coach, once said, “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work.” With these words, Lombardi highlights that people are nurtured to become a leader and a follower. For instance, Lombardi asserts that a person is trained, whether to be a leader, or a follower, through eagerness and determination. The book, The Sunflower, written by Simon Wiesenthal, an author and a Jewish holocaust survivor, who focuses on one of the most controversial topics during and after World War II, forgiveness. In this book, Weisenthal talked about a questionable case in which Karl, an SS soldier who murdered plentiful of people, asked Weisenthal for forgiveness for all the pain he had done towards all the people that were affected by him. When it comes to the topic of whether people are born to become leaders or followers or is one trained by the environment, most people will readily agree that people are conditioned to become a leader or a follower, where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of, “What makes a person a leader?” Whereas some are convinced that people are natural born leaders. Becoming a leader consists with a few reasons such as developed leadership skills, the bystander apathy, and the diffusion of responsibility.

The author demonstrates that an adverse atmosphere can cause a person to relinquish their faith. The author establishes the purpose through the sufferings of Moishe the Beadle, Wiesel’s torment and plight of other prisoners in the concentration camp.

Yet those who did not accept their fate, took control of their own destiny during the Holocaust. These heroic individuals never had indifferences and took matters into their own hands. Three teens know as “The White Rose” decided to spread the word of possible “freedom by creating and distributing pamphlet”(“PROTEST OF YOUTH”). Yet upon the guards discovering of their plans, they were sentenced to death for their crime they have done. This correlates to Wiesel speech which all “gave into indifferences” including his own “God”(The Perils of Indifference). With no form of guidance and hope driven from others to show human emotion, the teen’s came to the realization that the only way they may be able to stand a chance seeing freedom from the camp was herself. Thus, with the knowledge of the teens fate, we must come to a understandment that to see hope for a future world without indifferences.We must learn showing a helping hand in signs genocide such as the holocaust and not wait.

“At The Mind’s Limit” is a series of essays written by Jean Amery, a German born Jew who survived the holocaust, who gives the reader a very interesting perspective into the mind of a persecuted Jew from 1935 forward. Amery does not consider himself a religious Jew or one who follows any Jewish traditions. In fact, he did not know that Yiddish was a language until he was 18. So Amery describes the events leading up to and following the holocaust through the eyes of an “intellectual” and tries to find out whether being an “intellectual” helped or hindered his mental and spiritual capacity as he experienced

When Abraham Sutzkever wrote “How?” in February 1943, he was only seven months from his own freedom, yet the ghetto itself was still one year and five months from emancipation. Yet his portrayal of “the day of Liberation” appears very similar to a day in the Nazi ghettos, where time is extended through pain, devastation, and fear. The only difference felt is the frustration of their memories and their powerlessness to proceed past the hatred and pain that were connected to the deaths of thousands, both literally and figuratively. These dark memories are not forgotten by time, and his imagined survival of the Jews appears bleak and tedious; the pain and gloom of their experiences overshadowing their

Faith is like a little seed; if you think about the positive aspects of a situation, then it will grow, like a seed grows when you water it. However, if the seed does not receive water anymore, it will die, which serves as a parallel to the horrors and antagonism of the concentration camps that killed Elie’s faith. After the analysis of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the reader can visualize the horrors and slaughter of millions of innocent people that occurred in concentration camps. Throughout the book, Wiesel explains how his faith in God was tested, as he was forced to leave his home, separated from his family, and observed the death all around him; he even witnessed children being thrown into huge ditches of fire alive. Elie felt abandoned, betrayed, and deceived by the God that he knew who was a loving and giving God. It was then he started to doubt His existence. Elie tried to hold on to his faith, but the childhood innocence had disappeared from within him, and he lost his faith in God completely.

Going about life with a forgiving attitude tends to make us happier and more at peace. In The Sunflower, forgiveness is the main and most important concept. Karl asks for forgiveness from Simon on his actions and Simon goes through the rest of his life pondering whether or not what he did was right and if he should try and forgive himself for what he did. After talking to Bolek, Simon states, “I became less and less certain as to whether I had acted rightly” (Wiesenthal 83). This statement shows how Simon does not know whether what he did was right and how every person he talked to about his situation impacted his opinions. Forgiveness is such an important concept that it makes Wiesenthal ponder about his actions and ask for input from multiple different people. He felt as if he cannot be at peace until he comes to terms with his actions. This shows that forgiveness is an extremely important concept in both life and The Sunflower as it can lead us onto different paths and make us question our views and

Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.

As humans mature, the perception of a perfect world begins to reveal the horrors in life. This causes human’s innocence to slowly diminish. In a memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel demonstrates how his innocence fades away as a teenager in a concentration camp. Wiesel experiences many horrendous scenes in the concentration camp. He has spent most of his teenage years there which traumatizes him for the rest of his life. He gradually starts to lose everything he has loved, which results in surviving alone. Wiesel’s loss of innocence causes his life to become more difficult by witnessing his father slapped, the disbelief in God, and observing children being incinerated alive.