It is hard for many people to take a second and walk in another's shoes and truly understand problems greater than their own, whether it be through poverty, chronic illness, or a simple cold, it is different for every person and hard to mimic. With the Holocaust in question, I would like to say that I am not the only person who finds it almost hard to believe. Did we truly do this to our own kind, and even so, less than a hundred years ago? It is very hard to imagine what the prisoners of the Holocaust went through every day on the street, in ghettos, and in the camps. In part one of The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal, he is brought to a dying S.S man and is asked for his absolution. At the time, Wiesenthal did not know how to respond, so he …show more content…
walked away and let the man die without an answer.
Wiesenthal believed that he himself could not forgive this man, only the ones he killed could forgive him. Though, guilt still clouded his mind as he wondered if he had done the right thing. If I were in Wiesenthal’s place, I would have done the same, but instead of letting the S.S die with a fogged mine of remorse, I would have told him that I could not forgive him personally, but I accepted his plea of an apology.
My own personal opinion may or may not be right, but then again, I am not Wiesenthal, I was not there when the S.S man gave his speech of terrible things he had done to Jews. I could never be there in Wiesenthal’s place. Though, I would like to believe in this scenario that I am Wiesenthal, I would tell the S.S man that he could not directly be forgiven from me. Yes, he did kill innocent people in brutal ways, such as crowding families into a ghetto house and setting it to flames, but this man spoke in such a way that made me
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think. He didn’t really want to do all of this, did he? In some cases, we are all pushed to do things that we didn’t initially want to do. I had to learn how to ride a bicycle without the training wheels at the age of ten, even though I did not want to. I wanted to keep the training wheels on as a safety guard, but my father felt like I needed to grow up and learn how to ride a two-wheel bicycle. In some ways, maybe Nazi soldiers that became who they are were forced to join. These Aryan men did not want to be mistaken for a Jew supporter and put themselves and their families in danger. Even though this could be one scenario, there were also people who fully supported the extermination of Jews. This dying S.S man that Wiesenthal met, however, was one that was seemingly forced to join the Hitler Youth. For that, I give him sympathy. Additionally, the S.S man was clearly grieving on his deathbed. In most cases with S.S and Nazi officials, they are either proud of what they have done to the Jews, or run in fear of the consequences. This particular case of forgiveness should have been given, but not fully. His apology would be accepted, but he would not be forgiven. Only those whom he killed could forgive him. To Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, he believed that Wiesenthal should have done something that was similar to my opinion.
Ricard believes that “forgiveness is always possible and one should always forgive”. In his own response to Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, he explains that there are different situations in one’s life that people can find it to be difficult to forgive. He also says that forgiveness does not mean absolution, which is a great point. If Wiesenthal did forgive the S.S man, that would not mean he would give him his absolution. The S.S man would have to earn his absolution through death, if his belief was in God. Perhaps Wiesenthal wouldn’t have felt so much regret in his lack of an answer if he had said that the S.S man was forgiven. Wiesenthal may have felt better about his stance of being a Jew being the first to forgive a Nazi. Ricard also said, “For the dying SS soldier, feeling remorse in recognition of the monsterousess of his deeps was a first good step. But he could have created much more good by telling his fellow Nazi soldiers to abandon their inhuman behavior”. Knowing now what others could have possibly done to the S.S man for saying something along the lines of that, he would have surely been tortured or killed by the more radical Nazi’s who truly believed Jews were the scum of the Earth. To summarize, Ricard deemed that Wiesenthal should have gave forgiveness to the S.S man, but to not forgive him for the people he had
killed. Different from Ricard’s opinion and my similar opinion, who would have thought that Wiesenthal was in the right? Who would have thought that he had done the right thing of walking away, or even possibly stating that the S.S man was not going to be forgiven? I have an inkling that most prisoners who went through the Holocaust and dealt with it single handedly would have told Wiesenthal to spit in the man’s face. People such as Primo Levi, Judith Magyar Isaacson, maybe even Anne Frank. They had all seemingly been to hell and back, but there are still some Holocaust survivors that have forgiven the Germans and the Nazi’s for what they have done in their past, such as Kitty Hart-Moxon. It is hard to forgive those who had been the cause of fear, torture, and death of your own people. I wouldn't be too surprised if a Holocaust survivor couldn’t think of forgiving a former Nazi, no matter how many apologies they spewed. I would be far more surprised if a prisoner had forgiven a Nazi. In Eva Kor’s case, a former prisoner with her twin sister in Auschwitz, she stated that forgiving Nazi’s have set her free. Free in a sense of getting a weight lifted off her shoulders from the dread she went through as a child. With all things considered, with the S.S man forgiven or not forgiven, it is more of a moral stance between person-to-person. Ricard and I believe in forgiveness, not absolution. Others may have believed, as said before, that Wiesenthal should have spit in the dying S.S man’s face. These are all valid opinions, and they can be as different or as similar as there are different and similar people. Though, akin to a blooming sunflower, people’s opinions can change and blossom into something bigger.
The author of my essay is Simon Balic and he is a historian and culturologist. The title of the work is, Sunflower Symposium (109-111). Balic wrote this essay thirty years after The Sunflower was written. Balic argues that he does not forgive the sufferer, although he does feel some remorse. The author supports and develops the thesis in a chronological order in order to take the reader through exactly what was seen, heard, and thought of during this time. Both Weisenthal and Balic had a liable reason to not forgive the soldier, “There are crimes whose enormity cannot be measured. Rectifying a misdeed is a matter to be settled between the perpetrator and the victim” (Wiesenthal 54). Through this, Balic was trying to speak to his audience of fellow historians.
Analysis and explanation of Wiesenthal’s actions When Simon was asked to forgive the SS officer, he blankly looked at the man, stood up, and left. One of the main problems that he faced is he definitely was not able to absolve the man of the crimes considering he could not speak for his entire people. Wiesenthal did not have authority to absolve the actions of those who were responsible for the holocaust nor did he want to in the first place. Different people have different ideologies about the way that one can accept forgiveness. Literature from the Jewish culture has a lot to say about this and understandably so.
Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness spoke to me about the question of forgiveness and repentance. Simon Wiesenthal was a Holocaust prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He experienced many brutal and uneasy experiences that no human being should experience in their lifetime and bear to live with it. Death, suffering, and despair were common to Simon Wiesenthal that he questioned his own religious faith because he asks why would his God allow the Holocaust happen to his people to be slaughter and not do anything to save them. During Simon Wiesenthal time as a Jewish Holocaust, Simon was invited to a military hospital where a dying Nazi SS officer wanted to have a conversation. The Nazi SS officer told Simon his story of his life and confesses to Simon of his horrific war crimes. Ultimately, the SS officer wanted forgiveness for what he done to Simon’s Jewish people. Simon Wiesenthal could not respond to his request, because he did not know what to do with a war criminal that participate in mass genocide to Simon’s people. Simon Wiesenthal lives throughout his life on asking the same crucial question, “What would I have done?” (Wiesenthal 98). If the readers would be on the exact situation as Simon 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 Thomas Brudholm, Charles Griswold, and Trudy Govier. The possibly raised objection, for this particular modified situation, of forgiveness being necessary to move on from Desmond Tutu will be countered with the logic of needing to eventually find an end somewhere.
I think he felt that if he got your forgiveness then he could die in peace for all the bad he had done. A lot of Jewish people had died due to what Hitler ordered everyone in Germany army to do. Albert Speer was a high-ranking Nazi member and he was also Hitler’s minister and even though he knew he was going to jail no matter what was said at the Nuremberg trials he had confessed to all the things he had done. According to Speer “My moral guilt is not subject to the statute of limitations, it cannot be erased in my lifetime” (245). In making this comment, Speer knew that even though he was punished with twenty years of imprisonment that they only punished his legal guilt. Speer was haunted by the things he had done and he knew that he did not deserve anyone’s forgiveness. Even Speer, Hitler’s minister, knew that no one in the German army deserved anyone’s sympathy or
He experiences numerous people being hanged, beaten, and tortured daily which changes the amount of faith and trust that he has in Humanity and God. He sees faithful and courageous people crumble in front of his own eyes before their lives are stolen. Towards the end of the book, Wiesel is in the hospital at the camp for surgery on his leg and the man in the bed next to him says something that is bitterly true, “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people,” (Wiesel 81). Wiesel doesn’t argue with this, which shows that he had lost his faith in humanity, and doesn’t know who to trust. Wiesel is also naive and vulnerable at the beginning of the book. He refuses to touch the food at the ghetto and strongly considers rebelling against the officers at the Concentration camps. At the same time, he is also a strong and fairly well-fed boy who does not grow tired easily. He is shocked that the world is letting these barbarities occur in modern times. Over time, he grows accustomed to the beatings and animal-like treatment that is routine at the camps. “I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked….. Had I changed that much so fast?”
There are many heroic individuals in history that have shown greatness during a time of suffering ,as well as remorse when greatness is needed, but one individual stood out to me above them all. He served as a hero among all he knew and all who knew him. This individual, Simon Wiesenthal, deserves praise for his dedication to his heroic work tracking and prosecuting Nazi war criminals that caused thousands of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other victims of the Holocaust to suffer and perish.
He says, “These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations,... so much violence; so much indifference.” (4). Indifference is shown by not only the people involved in these violent events, but also Wiesel’s audience as well, many clueless of these events. For one to fail to know and understand these events in order to stop and bring awareness to them is just as wrong as committing the event in the first place, according to Wiesel. One must also believe the event itself to escape the corruptive qualities of indifference. During the Holocaust, many did not believe what was happening and chose to then ignore it rather than do anything about it. The unaware audience and people in the 1940s thoroughly proves the corrosiveness of
In The Sunflower while in a hospital, Simon Wiesenthal was approached by a nurse who leads him to a dying SS soldier named Karl who confessed to Wiesenthal of his heinous acts against Jews, He asked Wiesenthal for his forgiveness. Instead of replying Wiesenthal walked away and later that night the soldier passed away. Through Karl’s confession you could see that he was remorseful for the actions committed through his time as an SS soldier; therefore, Karl should be forgiven.
That doubt plagued Wiesel, causing him to abandon his faith and walk away from it. However, that nameless “neighbor” he encountered not only walked away, but followed a different path, a path where the man intending to slaughter the Jewish people was the sole figure he believed in.
The position to choose between forgiving one’s evil oppressor and letting him die in unrest is unlike any other. The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal explores the possibilities and limitations of forgiveness through the story of one Jew in Nazi Germany. In the book, Wiesenthal details his life in the concentration camp, and the particular circumstance in which a dying Nazi asks him for forgiveness for all the heinous acts committed against Jews while under the Nazi regime. Wiesenthal responds to this request by leaving the room without giving forgiveness. The story closes with Wiesenthal posing the question, “What would you have done?” Had I been put in the position that Wiesenthal was in, I would ultimately choose to forgive the Nazi on the basis
In Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower on the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness the author is asked to fulfill a dying solider last wish to forgive him because of the crimes he has committed against the Jewish people of the Holocaust. When Wiesenthal is asked for forgiveness, he simply leaves the room. Wiesenthal states that the encounter with the dying man left “a heavy burden” (Wiesenthal 55) on him. The confessions in which he admitted to have “profoundly disturbed [him]” (Wiesenthal 55). As Wiesenthal tries to make sense of what he has encountered he begins to make excuses for why the man might have done what he did. He say...
While reading “The Sunflower,” by Simon Wiesenthal, I had many mixed emotions and reactions to his story as would many other readers. One of the most reoccurring thoughts that I would have is to feel truly sorry for Simon. In Simon’s story, he tells us how he was a randomly picked Jew and heard a dying Nazi soldier named Karl confess his sins to him. After the confession of the soldier, Karl asked Simon for forgiveness for his wrongdoing to the Jews and any other sins he may have had. Simon had forgiven him, but many other Jews seemed to disagree with Simon’s call on whether or not Karl should have received forgiveness. I for one would have forgiven him also. I do realize that I really do not have in a say in this or not, but there are many
Botwinick writes in A History of the Holocaust, “The principle that resistance to evil was a moral duty did not exist for the vast majority of Germans. Not until the end of the war did men like Martin Niemoeller and Elie Wiesel arouse the world’s conscience to the realization that the bystander cannot escape guilt or shame” (pg. 45). In The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick writes of a world where Niemoeller and Wiesel’s voices never would have surfaced and in which Germany not only never would have repented for the Holocaust, but would have prided itself upon it. Dick writes of a world where this detached and guiltless attitude prevails globally, a world where America clung on to its isolationist policies, where the Axis powers obtained world domination and effectively wiped Jews from the surface, forcing all resistance and culture to the underground and allowing for those in the 1960’s Nazi world to live without questioning the hate they were born into.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.