| Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi-hunter, published a book in 1969 called The Sunflower. While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, he was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying SS man, who wanted to confess his horrible crimes against Jews to some Jewish person. Wiesenthal said nothing to this man, and wondered then and years later if he had done the right thing. The Sunflower recounts this story (it's short--only about 100 pages). In a later version of the book, several important writers, politicians, theologians, psychiatrists, activists, and others responded to Wiesenthal's dilemma. It's a book well worth reading; below is my response. |
| THE SUNFLOWER |
| I am a finite man, who can do but a finite number of things with his finite amount of time on earth. I have been given some measure of faith, another measure of self-preservation, and various other qualities meted to me at my conception in various doses. The events of my life and the personality of my soul have re-apportioned and are re-apportioning these qualities, as time and circumstance dictate. |
| Simon Wiesenthal is also a finite man. At the point in his life when the Nazi SS man, Karl, asked Wiesenthal to forgive him of his crimes of inhumanity, brutality, and murder, Wiesenthal was in no condition to do so. Torture and tragedy on an unthinkable scale had taken away most of Wiesenthal's life's energy from the areas of faith and forgiveness and re-concentrated it in self-preservation. I do not believe that he was wrong not to forgive the dying SS man...at that point in his own life. Maybe Wiesenthal would have been wrong not to write The Sunflower. |
| Therefore, in a way, I think that Wiesenthal has forgiven Karl, or, at the very least, allowed him to be forgiven by a percentage of the readers of The Sunflower: by some of the contributors to Book 2, The Symposium, and perhaps by others of us as well. An act of pure vengeance and unforgiveness on Wiesenthal's part toward Karl would have been to ignore his conscience and never share this episode in his life, to have remained silent and never written the book. Suppressing this inner turmoil would have been tragic and detrimental to Wiesenthal--at the very least psychologically, if not in other ways. I believe that The Sunflower represents an unconscious desire on Wiesenthal's part to allow Karl some measure of forgiveness. |
| So, that is my opinion of Wiesenthal's action--or, non-action--at that point in his life. But let me add one more thing, which I think is relevant and follows from Wiesenthal's dilemma. Many have asked, "Where was God in all this tragedy?" They also dare to suppose that they'll question Him in the same manner at the Throne of Judgement. However, our eyes will be turned inwards on ourselves and our own evil. In order to be a little less ashamed on that day, ask yourself now, "Where am I in all of today's suffering?" |
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