The Sunflower

by Simon Wiesenthal

Paperback, 1997

Barcode

878

Call number

234.5 WIE

Status

Available

Call number

234.5 WIE

Pages

289

Description

A group of philosophers, critics, and writers weigh the moral issues involved in a young Jews' response to a dying Nazi's confession of mass murder.

Publication

Schoken (1997)

ISBN

0805210601 / 9780805210606

Collection

Rating

(134 ratings; 4.1)

User reviews

LibraryThing member rcohen425
The Sunflower is a powerful, non-fiction story of Simon Wiesenthal, a holocaust survivor who is faced with a life-altering philosophical decision while imprisoned during World War II in a Nazi concentration camp. While in the camp, Wiesenthal is excused from his labor duties to visit with a dying
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Nazi soldier. The Nazi soldier is a mere 21 years old, roughly the same age as Wiesenthal. The soldier was injured during the war, and is now on his deathbed. As he lays in his bed helpless, he asks Wiesenthal for forgiveness of the atrocities he has committed against the Jews. He asks for his forgiveness on behalf of all the Jews. “Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing.” As a Holocaust survivor, Wiesenthal always questioned his decision, whether or not he should have said something or remained silent. The first half of the book is Wiesenthal’s story of this encounter. The second half of the book includes fifty-three prominent individuals who respond to Wiesenthal’s questions. Each person presents a different approach to the questions where there is no black and white answer.
This book is intense and heavy at times, but I still believe it would be appropriate for 8th graders and above. It deals with issues of right verses wrong, understanding and forgiveness; all issues 8th graders should be aware of and contemplate how to deal with.
A good lesson plan to incorporate into a curriculum on the holocaust includes students first reading the first section of the book (100 pages), Wiesenthal’s story. Then the students will choose the point of view of one of the philosopher’s and compare and contrast their own view of forgiveness with the philosopher’s.
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LibraryThing member serendipitina
The power of forgiveness, both in being able to forgive and not being able to forgive. It also begs the question...who is forgiven for...the person who committed the act that needs forgiveness, or the person against whom the act was committed that must decide whether to forgive. Wiesenthal protrays
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this decision on forgiveness quite effectively....first in telling his own story and then in inviting others to share their views. This book will not provide you with any clear answers on forgiveness, but will hopefully open up your mind to it and its possibilities.
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LibraryThing member suesbooks
Interesting and thought-provoking responses regardin Wiesenthal's not forgiving a dying Nazi
LibraryThing member EllenH
A tough read, but one that we read for book club.Very interesting questions, can or should one be able to forgive and forget the transgressions of one person to someone other than oneself? Is there a future without forgiveness?
LibraryThing member Bellettres
One of the most thought-provoking and meaningful books I've ever read. Wiesenthal, and those who responded to his book, explore the issues of forgiveness, redemption, mercy, justice, and more. Raising more questions than it answers, The Sunflower provided me with a new look at the Holocaust and its
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meaning today.
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LibraryThing member thatotter
I enjoyed the story and thought it posed an interesting moral question, but the symposium section where other people discuss their choices got a little long and repetitive for me.
LibraryThing member loubigfish
This book makes you think about the what it means to be humble. It's a great story with some somber chapters and the ending really can pull at your heartstrings.
LibraryThing member PuddinTame
This is a review of the revised and expanded paperback edition, (Schocken Books, preface March 1988.) The edition was clearly reprinted during or after 2005, since my copy records Wiesentahl's death in that year. I am unaware if the vitas of the contributors have been updated. There are several
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editions of this book, with an ever-expanding list of respondees; since a list of people whose contributions have been kept from the 1976 edition, probably there have been eliminations. I soon read the book a second time – it well worth the effort; do read the short biographies in the back as you read the pieces.

The book is an important work for those interested in the issues of forgiveness, and of Shoah. Wiesenthal, Shoah survivor who dedicated his life to bring Nazis to justice, tells his story of an incident during his imprisonment that has haunted him – a dying SS (Schutzstaffel) soldier who is haunted by his slaughter and torture of Jews wants to talk to a Jew, any Jew, and ask forgiveness. Wiesenthal sits by his bedside and unhappily listens to the soldier's horrible tale, his remorse, his regret at dying young, his desire to have his dying eased by forgiveness. In the end, Wiesenthal silently leaves. He later visits the soldier's mother, but cannot bring himself to tell her what her son became, although he does discuss the guilt of the Germans as a whole.

At the end of the book, Wiesenthal asks the readers to decide what they would have done in his place. Some of the respondents mention that he specifically sent the manuscript to them – it is unclear if that is true in all cases.

I think that I should state that I was raised as a Christian, a Methodist, and I am now, not coincidentally, an atheist. Jean Améry most like myself in that regard.

One must ask: what is forgiveness? We cannot comment on extending it if we don't know what it is. Does forgiveness automatically entail reconciliation? In Amish Grace by Kraybill, et al., written after the Nickel Mines murders of ten Amish school girls, the authors say that the Amish speak of forgiveness, reconciliation, and pardon. Forgiveness is personal, it is the abandonment of feelings of revenge, and it is required of Christians who hope for the forgiveness of God. The Amish in the book admit that although they immediately offer forgiveness, it can be a long process, and they must still wrestle with anger. It need not necessarily lead to reconciliation. I think that too many people who call for instant pardon from Wiesenthal (and everybody else) have little feeling for how difficult that can be. “It is also a question of how much, how quickly, how easily can any individual forgive a mass murder,” as Sven Alkalaj wrote. Pardon can be given only by the community, and even those who are forgiven by individuals may be punished by the community, especially if they do not repent and reform.

On the other hand, did the soldier repent? Wiesenthal, who is the only one with direct experience, thought so, but others, especially Jewish commenters, have raised this issue. They point to his desire to speak to a Jew, any Jew, and his self-pity. He was obviously as penitent as he was going to be in this life, he is incapable of performing any atonement. Nick Smith, in I Was Wrong, argues that the wrongdoer should only express remorse and the intention to do better as part of an apology. He should not ask for forgiveness because then the focus is on himself, not the injured party. In Before Forgiving, edited by Sharon Lambe and Jeffrie G. Murphy, Janet Landman's “Earning Forgiveness” looks at the case of Katherine Ann Power, a 1960s radical who turned herself in and was sentenced to prison for her part in a robbery/murder. Power was chagrined at her parole hearing to learn that the children of the policeman who was killed were skeptical of her true repentence and her excuses. She decided that she had intellectual and psychological work to do before she truly embraced her guilt and remorse. She decided not to ask for forgiveness, since it was not her place to suggest that the victims had more work to do.

I utterly reject that definition that forgiveness is a gift of mental peace that one gives oneself. Forgiveness must have something to do with the offender. That definition also assumes that if one has not forgiven someone, one is constantly fuming over the wrongs that they have done, but one can get over things without forgiving them. I have never forgiven the murderer of a friend of mine but the state of Virginia gave him a just sentence, and I am at peace that there is nothing more to be done, not even going to the effort of hating him.

I wince when I read some of the entries, particularly by Christians who speak of “our Judeo-Christian heritage,” and then quote solely from Christian scripture. I hope that “our” refers only to Christians. Many of them show no awareness of the Jewish differention between crimes against men and crimes against God, nor of teshuvah, their idea of repentence and atonement. Reading the Christian responses next to the Jewish ones, it is clear that the two religions have quite different views of the matter. Jews tended to argue that only the victim of a wrong can forgive it, making murder an unforgivable crime, and that Wiesenthal had no standing to forgive, let alone any other objections. Theodore M. Hesburgh shows a proper sensitivity, beginning his statement with, “Who am I to advise a person of another religion who has suffered incredibly more than I have? I would not ordinarily presume to do so, but I was requested to do so, so I do so.”

In another category are comments from people who have real standing to comment from experience: other Shoah survivors, other Jews, and people like Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama whose people have been through similar crises. (I am aware that some Jews reject any comparisons of Shoah with anything else, but I don't agree with that point of view.) The Dalai Lama called for forgiveness, and he spoke of a monk whose greatest fear during his years of imprisonment was that he would lose his sense of compassion for the Chinese. By the latter standard, Wiesenthal rose to the occasion, for he never seems to have lost all compassion.

Desmond Tutu calls for forgiveness, and he speaks of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Again, one must ask, what is the relationship between forgiveness and reconciliation? Can one reconcile without forgiveness, perhaps based on the promise of better behavior in the future?

As an atheist, forgiveness has no mystical or cosmic meaning for me, but it is still important. I agree with Jeanne Safer in Forgiving and Not Forgiving that forgiveness should not be automatic, and depends in part on our relationship with the offender. Can one reconcile without forgiving people whom one must deal with, especially if there is no way forward without at least a truce or a parole? Truce or a parole might be more productive than forgiveness which demands so much of the victim and may leave the evil-doer feeling exonerated – particularly is no repentance or atonement is required.

I wouldn't criticize Wiensenthal if he had smothered the dying soldier, but I'm glad he didn't: I admire his compassion with both the soldier and his mother, and I think he did the right thing, and the best thing for himself. I agree that he did not have the standing to forgive him, but since the soldier was dying, and they were in that private space, I would not criticize him if he had told him he forgave him out of compassion, without actually forgiving him, although I'm not recommending it. I don't think it would have had a cosmic meaning, but Wiensenthal must consider what it would have meant to him and if it would have offended his integrity. I wonder if the commentors that argued that Wiesenthal should have forgiven the soldier because he was dying are thinking the same thing.
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LibraryThing member thewanderingjew
“The Sunflower” was republished in 1998, after fifty years. In this edition, there are many more respondents to the question that Simon Wiesenthal poses at the end of his story about the sunflower and the dying SS officer, Karl Seidl. It is very thought provoking. The audiobook has two readers
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who did a superb job playing the roles of the males and females who entered opinions into the narrative. They were able to narrate without affect, but with effective emphasis, leaving the reader to draw his/her own conclusion as to the message's meaning and to make a decision without any one’s opinion having undue influence.
As a prisoner in a concentration camp, Simon stood for roll call hoping to be selected to work outside the camp. With the work detail, he is taken to a place that used to be his high school but now serves as a medical facility. On the way there, he suddenly notices sunflowers. They are a happy symbol, and he is surprised to see them. In the camps there are no flowers. A nurse selects him to visit a patient who wants to confess his sins, his awful crime against the Jews. The patient is an SS officer, Karl Seidl. He asked the nurse to bring him any Jew, and she chose Simon. The German officer wants to confess to a Jew, and ask for forgiveness. Although Simon doesn’t want to do this, he remains and listens. He, unlike Karl, really has no choice. Karl wants Simon to forgive him for something he did that haunts him. He wants to die in peace, although he robbed the Jews of that same right when he murdered them. When Simon looked at the soldier’s hands, he thought he saw another sunflower. He thought, this soldier will have a proper burial, but he and the other Jews would not. He left the room without forgiving him. Simon asks the respondents and the reader, “What would you have done”?
The many replies in the book are from participants from all walks of life: Green Berets, former POW’s, religious leaders, political leaders, authors, judges, doctors, activists, Holocaust survivors, Jews, Budhists, Christians, and more. Famous names appear like Dennis Prager, Nelson Mandela, Cynthia Ozick, Harold Kushner, Joseph Telushkin, Primo Levi, Hannah Arendts, and Albert Speer, whom we are told was the only Nazi to ever show any remorse for his crimes at the trials. Some have direct, first hand knowledge of the Holocaust. Each participant‘s response commands the reader’s attention as voice is given to personal perspectives which are based on backgrounds and beliefs.
The book is sometimes heart wrenching because Simon takes the reader into his nightmare, and it is a bad place to be. When he asks the reader to tell him what they would have done had they walked in his shoes, it becomes a more painful read. It is a serious request to ask the reader to enter the world of Nazi Germany, to visit with the SS officer and think about whether or not they would have forgiven the Nazi. Does he even deserve to be forgiven? Perhaps he deserves vengeance for the crimes he has committed. Should he not be punished? Should there not be retribution? Is his fear of dying not a just punishment after what he has done? Would any G-d forgive him?
Is Karl’s crime one that fits into the idea of “turning the other cheek”, or “forgiving them for they know not what they do”? I don’t think so. I don’t think his crime is forgivable. Are such heinous crimes against humanity ever forgivable? For sure, they should never be forgettable. While I do not believe I could have forgiven him, my daughter said she would have. Is it the great distance in years that separates the crime from her personal experience that which makes her more easily forgiving? Or, is it that she really does not know anyone who was directly affected by those atrocious times, as I do. I thought that the horror of the Holocaust continued to project itself on succeeding generations, so should someone who actively participated, who was truly complicit, be forgiven? How can one forgive an SS officer, the very symbol of the Nazi’s brutality?
Why did Karl want a Jew to forgive him, the very same Jew he would have murdered without so much as a second thought? He believed they were not human; they were a scourge to be destroyed. This was what they taught him, and he chose to believe it. He was 16 when he joined the Hitler youth; he was not coerced. His parents did not condone his behavior. He was old enough to know better and did not have to comply with Hitler’s monstrous ideas. Was Karl, now 21, sorry for what he did, or did he just want absolution so he could die in peace? I do not think he really cared about what was happening to the Jews, but rather, only what would happen to himself. When I consider Simon vs. Karl, I choose Simon’s decision. Simon was a Jew waiting for death at the hands of the Nazis. Karl was a Nazi wounded and dying. If Karl was not wounded, would he have continued to kill Jews, would he have killed Simon? Even after witnessing the death of the family that so traumatized him, he continued to murder Jews; he continued to follow orders. His remorse was for himself only, not for the Jews he murdered or even for the family he watched die and helped to murder that inhabited his nightmares. He felt he was too young to die, but he had brutally murdered innocent young children. His pain and fear were due to the memory that haunted him, not to a genuine feeling of sorrow for his victims.
The reader learns that Karl’s mom did not want to sell and leave her home, although her son and husband were dead, for that represented her life, yet the Nazis freely stole the homes of the Jews and never looked back. Did she and others not notice that when the Jews disappeared they often left most of their possessions behind? Was that not their life they were being forced to leave, without any choice in the matter? Even after the war, most survivors had no place to which to return. How can the reader reconcile all of the contradictions and forgive the person responsible for them? Karl never really seemed to recognize the error of his ways, so his sin, to me, was even more unforgivable. When Simon visited Karl’s mother, should he have told her the truth about her son’s crimes, or should he have shielded her from the heinous acts he had committed? She thought he was a good boy. What kind of a good boy would be in the SS? Was she that naïve or simply blinded by her love? In actuality, though, what would be gained by causing her more grief and pain? She did not approve of what her son did, and Karl’s father never had a relationship with him after he joined the Hitler Youth. They were, however, like others, guilty of turning a blind eye to the atrocities going on around them, pretending not to notice, simply pretending that the Jews were just being sent to a place where they could all live happily ever after. That was a ridiculous supposition they chose to believe, and they had to know it was implausible. I do not know if I would have told her about her son’s violent behavior, but I do not think I would have been able to forgive her either.
Because each participant in the narrative is responding to the same question, there is some redundancy, so it would be better to read only a few responses at a time, digesting them first and then moving on to the next so the reader can fully take in and understand all the opinions rendered and acknowledge all of the references mentioned. Even today, looking back at the atrocities committed and those that continue to be, in several countries like Bosnia, China, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Tibet, and the Middle East, peace still remains elusive. I seriously question the theory that the old woman passed on about G-d. Did G-d temporarily turn his head? Did he take a leave of absence? Somehow, that theory does not wash for me. Are all G-d’s absent from time to time? I would prefer to think that for a period of time in history, G-d fails to defeat evil, but that, in itself is a frightening thought. On the subject of fear, how about what frightens me most? I find the need that most people today have to forget the Holocaust, even to rewrite it, to move on, is what concerns me. Forgetting diminishes the memory of those who died and eventually will weaken our resolve to prevent it from happening again. Have we not learned anything from the horror carried out by the Nazis and others like them?
Because there were so many respondents to the question posed, I sometimes lost the thread of the narrative. Since everyone was addressing the same philosophical question, it also sometimes became redundant and occasionally tedious when it took on the feeling of a school lecture. Yet, I believe the book should be taught in every high school class before a student graduates. The need to remember and prevent these genocidal maniacs from taking over should be of paramount concern. There were many interesting facts revealed in the book such as: there were more righteous Christians in Poland than anywhere else, but also Poland had the larger population of Jews, and the only country with an actual organization set up to help the Jews, originated in Poland, so although there was an enormous amount of anti-Semitism there, there was also a positive counterpart, as well. The Sunflower question reminded me of the Trolley conundrum. Both have no one right answer; and both are difficult problems to solve.
I found a couple of messages in the book interesting. They regarded a religious interpretation. One was that “Only G-d can forgive, so throw yourself on G-d’s mercy”, but another was that G-d was absent during the time of the Shoah. Why would G-d be absent, if not to allow it to take place? Was G-d complicit? When G-d returned, would G-d, therefore, actually be able to forgive the murderers? Does G-d exist? For what kind of a G-d would allow such crimes in the first place?
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LibraryThing member SoulFlower1981
Forgiveness is such a tricky thing isn't it? That is one of the baselines of this particular book. The book is written by a survivor of the Holocaust and a very peculiar incident that happens to him during his time in a concentration camp. I have to be completely honest if this wasn't for a course
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that I am in this semester this would have been one of the first books that I simply didn't respond to at all, but I actually have to write a response for my course. The book talks about the limits of forgiveness, but in my own life I believe there are not limits. It was hard to read this book because of what I felt was some venom on the part of these individuals. While I understand that the Holocaust was one of the most evil parts of our history I also know that forgiveness should be had for all individuals regardless of their station in life. All individuals. Some people will not agree with me, but I guess that is one of the beauties of this particular book everyone can and will form their own individual opinions on the matter. This will be one of my shorter reviews because I will later post my own personal response here after it is completed.
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LibraryThing member walkthemoon89
"You are a prisoner in a concentration camp. A dying Nazi soldier asks you for forgiveness. What would you do?"

I don't like it when people pussyfoot around about whether Nazi soldiers can be linked in some way to Hitler and the Holocaust. Some people like to pussyfoot away from using the term "Nazi
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soldier" at all, basically since it was a very popular army, and more or less a synonym for a German man of that age, loved by wife and children.

But if you can be honest about the actual situation, instead of essentially just mulling around that it's difficult to think about, (or blaming the first to speak), I think that the problem can have a solution. If it were me in that scenario of the prisoner, I think that I would want to forgive the man who had ruined me for Hitler's sake. I don't know how long it would really take me to do that healing and forgive, but that would be my goal.

(Of course, if I am a non-prisoner then I cannot forgive them for what was done to others and not to me, but I interpret the thought experiment as making me the prisoner so that I can decide.)

So if you just forgive the Nazi, then by uniting these two elements, "forgive" and "Nazi", you are not simply closing your eyes to whatever it pleases you to and damn the consequences, and you cannot be accused, justly, at least, for bearing a grudge against A-ha and Abba, or whatever it would please people to say.

I mean, there's always some innocent in the camp of the wicked, but it is foolish to place all your hopes in this, for people quite simply are not always innocent, which is why people talk about the tents of the wicked the way that they do. But if you can forgive the Nazi straight, then you have a hope that nothing can take away.

And the lesson of course is that you do benefit from forgiving, from releasing the most logically powerful complaint. And you will commonly meet people who, for example, are impolite by nature, and therefore brusque and unconsciously intimidating because they are ignorant and exclusively physical, and because they don't know any better. But in the end, you can rage against them in vain, or forgive them.

"Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34, KJV).

If you can forgive anybody, even when they choose ignorance consciously as the Nazis did, and no matter what they do because of this, and the Nazis clearly did much, then nothing can disturb your peace.

"He fell to his knees, shouting, 'Lord, don't charge them with this sin!' And with that, he died." (Acts 7:60, NLT).

.... Anyway, the point is, that this is a great work of modern philosophy. (I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I don't really care for Kant. Ha!) I like it as much as the Stoics, who would be happy to hear that there's no arbitrarily difficult circumstance that can distort your morality. There isn't.

................

I might as well add a few things.

One is that I think that the other person has a conscience, no matter how terribly they've offended it.

Another thing is that he certainly was guilty as well as feeling that guilt, but I don't think being innocent is a condition of being forgiven, for then there is no such thing as forgiveness.

Also I'm not trying to trample on the Jews and their different ideas of forgiveness, (forgiveness as only being offered for what you yourself suffered), although the way they put it that made the least sense for me was when he said that the people who were murdered would accuse them for forgiving their murderers. That is needing the permission of the tribe to make a very personal choice, and I don't think that anybody can reach into your chest and force you to keep up your feelings against someone, as though they could think in your head. That's important to me.

Along similar lines, I realize that Christianity colors my decision, but I think that Christians are not always the wolves: consider the black Christians, who have been put into a situation of often comparable disaster--I don't want to belabor the point, but I think it's true-- but who I think can only benefit from this ideal of forgiveness that they carry.

Also I think that the idea that only Jews can understand the Holocaust, well, it completely demolishes the thought experiment, the point of the book, but then also it would have to apply equally to the blacks or to other groups for their stories, and ultimately you are just left with a slander, I think, against the human mind and its ability to have empathy, against using your mind to try to understand another person.... So I have to apologize I guess for this very Christian understanding of the Holocaust, but I can't apologize for it.

As for the mother or even the father of the SS man, I cannot affirm their guiltlessness, even though they had less power and no straightforward killings like their son, but I cannot help but feel this weak feeling for them, for their difficult situation, although if they had both lived to see evidence of their son's wrong-doing I think they would have to search for their own guilt as well, and really try to find it, not because everyone is the same, but because to live fully one must examine oneself, truthfully. I would even go so far as to agree with the author in that the children born later must examine what they have inherited: I'll admit I put that lighter than he does maybe, but I think you have to choose your relationship with your past, ask yourself if you benefit in some way materially, etc. Ask the tough questions.

And as for the author himself, I do not agree that we should not forgive him for not forgiving, as one of the prisoners assumed we would. Especially since his position does have nuisance, maybe more than is common among his religion, and obviously he never had to write the book at all or propose the thought experiment to begin with if he did not really want to. Also his silence before the dying son is paralleled by his silence later before his grieving mother, so I guess he just didn't want to make the choice about what to think about that man, or even offer it, except that he does offer it later to us. A lot can be said about silence obviously, but at least his seems like an honest, consistent sort.

And again with faith, one thing I found odd was how he felt at first about the sunflower for the grave, about how he worried about eternal justice and what having that sunflower meant; if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that once he got that sunflower, he got what was really his own, completely regardless of what any person gave or did not give him or said or did not say or accepted or did not accept, or anything.

So that's my entry: the first part being my response to the prompt or the thought experiment, and the second part being more of a review of the book: the first part of my entry being like the second part of the book, and the second part of my entry being a reflection of the book's first half.
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LibraryThing member GlennBell
The author describes a moral dilemma in which a Nazi SS agent asks for forgiveness from a Jew for his murderous acts as the German is dying. The author, a Jew, is perplexed by the question of whether he should have or appropriately could have forgiven the murderer. I actually find the discussion
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pointless. The request is meaningless and inappropriate. Surely we have more valuable things to do than to debate this issue.
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LibraryThing member LoveAtFirstBook
The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal is a book that has the power to change your life, and to think about the act of forgiveness in a very deep way.

This is the true story of Simon Wiesenthal, and how, as a Jewish prisoner under the Nazi regime, he encountered a dying Nazi soldier who would ask Simon
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to do something that is very difficult: to forgive him for his sins against the Jewish people.

This book has two sections: the first section detailing Simon’s telling of the story, and the second which is filled with essays written by prominent figures of what they would do in Simon’s role. I didn’t read all of the commentary, but I did read some of them.

For the full review, visit Love at First Book
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LibraryThing member jonbrammer
Fran Lebowitz said that Jews believe in revenge, because the Jewish God is an avenging God. On the other hand, forgiveness is a central pillar in Christian theology. Christ died on the cross to cleanse the sin of the world, and in the process forgave his tormentors.

These contrasting views of
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forgiveness are elucidated by the responses in the symposium - the Jewish thinkers tend to take a harsher view of the SS soldier's confession and hope for absolution, while the Christian thinkers tend to err on the side of forgiveness as an absolute moral obligation.

The conversation leads one to see the Christian view as naive - is it possible that the ethos of forgiveness permits the continuation of horrors? Do people feel free in their sin because they know that forgiveness and salvation are ultimately available to all, even the perpetrators of genocide? Whereas Jews more readily acknowledge and live with the consequences of their actions? The fact that Simon Wiesenthal wrestled with this question of forgiveness shows that he does not embrace simple-minded theological dogma in response to complex moral questions.
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LibraryThing member evatkaplan
excellent.
biographical of Wiesenthal's experience in the concentration camp. on a job near a hospital, he is selected to go with a nurse to meet a patient. patient is completely wrapped up, only two holes for the eyes. he is an SS. he speaks to Wiesenthal, telling him about an atrocity against
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jews that he was involved in. Before he dies, he wants forgiveness from a Jew before he dies.. he says he was a good Christian and regrets what he has done. Wiesenthal leaves the room without giving his forgiveness. He felt that he is not one to give it. he is haunted by his decision.
after the war he visits the SS's mother, and doesn't end up telling her the truth about her son.
the question is whether can one forgive the nazi's for their atrocities .
After the book, different journalists, thinkers, theologian...write their thoughts.
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