Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Survival in auschwitz critical analysis
Stories of dehumanized holocaust
The truth of Auschwitz
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Survival in auschwitz critical analysis
Thank you Mr. Wiesenthal for letting me be able to read and respond to your book The Sunflower. The Sunflower has showed me how ruthless it was for Jewish people in the Holocaust. In your book Karl, an SS solider, tries to get your forgiveness for the wrong he has done to the Jewish population. For a person to ask for forgiveness means that they have realized that they have done wrong and want to repent for their mistakes. The big question in your book was “What would you do?” I would’ve done exactly what you did I wouldn’t have granted the solider my forgiveness because he didn’t deserve it. A man who will kill innocent women, children and men just because of their beliefs has no right to be forgiven. It would be like a rapist asking his victim to forgive him after he violated and hurt her for horrible reasons. The victim wouldn’t just look at him and say I forgive you she would hate him and want him to pay for what he has done to her.
Herbert Marcus, who taught philosophy, also agrees with
…show more content…
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
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.
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
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.
Forgiveness is to stop feeling angry, to stop blaming someone for the way they made a person feel, and stop feeling victims of whatever wickedness was directed towards them. Is forgiveness necessary? Can everyone be forgiven despite the circumstances? If forgiveness depends on the situation, then is it necessary at all? Does forgiveness allow someone to continue their life in peace? Is forgiving someone who causes physical pain to someone, as a pose to forgiving someone who murdered a member of the family the same? If someone can forgive one of these acts so easily can the other be forgiven just as easy? Forgiveness allows for someone to come to terms with what they have experienced. In the case of murder forgiveness is necessary because it allows for someone to be at peace with themselves knowing they no longer have to live with hatred. It also allows someone to begin a new life with new gained experience and different perspectives on life. Forgiveness is necessary from a moral perspective because it allows someone to get rid of hatred and find peace within him or herself to move on with their lives.
He told of being on a balcony, seeing people pass by, and wanting to have a machine gun to release his anger. His hatred for the Germans and what they had done to him and his family was very evident. On a personal level Thomas Buergenthal learned to forgive, because it benefited him more than staying bitter. He sums this up when talking about himself and his mother by saying, “ I doubt that we would have been able to preserve our sanity had we remained consumed by hatred for the rest of our lives.” The process of forgiving took a lot of time. He eventually realized “that one cannot hope to protect mankind from crimes such as those that were visited upon us unless one struggles to break the cycle of hatred and violence that invariably leads to more suffering by innocent human beings.” This realization lead Buergenthal to go to law school and work in multiple human rights organizations and courts. He felt fit to serve in such a place as he was a victim of the greatest infringement on human rights in
I personally have mixed feelings about whether Albert Speer was in fact a ‘Good Nazi’. First of all, although being an architect could be harmless, his closeness and loyalty to Hitler seemed to tarnish his character, perhaps making him turn a cold shoulder towards the horrible things being conducted by Hitler and his government. There have been many arguments on whether Speer knew the full extent of what happened in the concentration camps and the upcoming fate of Jewish civilians. I believe that Speer did evidently understand the magnitude of what went on in the concentration camps and slave workers as he was present during Heinrich Himmler’s addressing of the Jews during the Posen Conference on October 6, 1943. Although Speer denies being
Speer’s image transitioned from an apolitical stance into a ‘skilled manipulator’ as a result of Gold Hagen and the ‘Office Chronicles’. Gold Hagen was a substantial figure who utilised Speer’s life events and altered historian perceptions on Speer’s personality. He argued that Speer had been present at the Gauleiters’ and Reich Officials’ Conference, therefore was cognizant of the ‘Final solution’ planned. Nevertheless, Speer claims in his three page affidavit that he did not attend the conference. However, Hagen debated that even though Speer was not present, he had prior knowledge of the ‘Final solution’ as was mentioned numerous times in Himmler’s speech. Sereny and Van Der Vat affirmed Hagen’s argument proving Speer’s involvement with the death of 75,000 Jews through his project of ‘Germania’ which involved demolishing Jewish settlements and utilizing slave labour to accomplish many tasks. Both historians argued,“…Speer was not an absent- minded , eyes-averted, amoral non-spectator of Nazi anti-Semitism but an active participant…” . This clearly depicts that Speer was not ‘apolitical’ however interested in party-fighting as he chose to ignore the issue of mortality in his dealings with the Jews. The ‘Office Chronicles’ which were written by Wolter from 1941 to 1945 were used as evidence for historians to
At the beginning Speer was held separately and he depicted himself as a technocrat who was willing to give information to his captors regarding German weapons and economic performance. Speer was not only forthcoming with information, but he also was the first to step forward, pleading a collective guilt and responsibility for the crimes committed by the Third Reich. Similar to his consolidation of power, this move is very different to the actions of Goering, who was the other member of Hitler’s inner circle who was on trial. While Goering, an ideologue who defended Hitler, and Nazi Germany’s war policy rather than admitting the criminality of his and the entire actions of the entire nation. This displays Speer’s realization of his only chance of survival, showing how he was not ruled by ideology like Goering but only out of self interest. This is further seen in his life following his release from Spandau, where he carefully creates the image of himself as the ‘Good Nazi’ through his writings. One of the constant themes within his writing is his claimed ignorance towards the systematic killing of Jews. One piece of historical evidence used by many historians such as Erich Goldhagen (Goldhagen, 1971) is Speer’s attendance at the Posen Conference, where Heinrich Himmler gave an explicit speech on the extermination of Europe’s Jews, where Speer is even mentioned. However, Speer continually denied that he was there at that time, claiming he left the conference prior to Speech. One of the leading historians on Speer, Gitta Sereny maintains that whether he was there or not, it was impossible for Speer to not know about this key Nazi policy (Sereny, 1995). This denial on the part of Speer displays how he cared simply about himself. Therefore, Speer did not work out of the machinations of an overarching ideology, showing
In The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal wrote of an incident of the time he was a concentration camp inmate. He described life in the concentration camp, the continuous humiliations, the hunger, the illness, and the constant threat of death. Death was fearful, but death was not his only worry. When he was asked by a dying Nazi soldier for forgiveness, this tore him down, ultimately killing his heart and tearing him mentally apart. Having heard the first confession of a dying SS man, Weisenthal continued to be troubled by his refusal to give forgiveness. In the end of the book when he asked his readers what they would do in his situation, Weisenthal not only bore witness to a horrible event, but he invited all people to participate in the discussion of justice and forgiveness.
Speer’s well structured and thought out defence shaped historical interpretation for years to come. At Nuremberg he presented himself as a pure technician and not involved in the politics or ideology of the party. He also claimed collective responsibility for crimes against Jews but also his ignorance of the Nazi intentions. As he stated at a later time: “I just stood aside and said to myself that as long as I did not personally participate it had nothing to do with me. My toleration for the anti Semitic campaign made me responsible for it.” This admission of guilt won a fair amount of sympathy from the court. The reasons he gave for being with the Nazi party was that he was taken by Hitler’s personality and also realised that if he was to achieve his dream as an architect he will have to sell his soul to the party. This image of Speer was to be accepted for a while by most historians and was given little attention. This was probably because Speer was a little less ‘spectacular’ than Hitler’s other henchmen. There were however some suspicions. John Galbraith, a member of the US team that debriefed Speer before the Nuremberg trial, said in Life magazine 1945 that Speer’s claims contained “elements of fantasy”. He also believed that Speer’s confession was a part of his “well developed strategy of self vindication and survival.”
At Nuremberg trials, Speer escaped the death penalty and only receives 20 years imprisonment. During the trials, Speer differentiated himself from other High Nazis by expressing remorse for his involvement in the regime and claiming ignorance of the Holocaust. This seemingly highly influenced the judge’s final verdict on Speer’s fate. After his release , Speer erected the image of a ‘Good Nazi’ by portraying himself as a mere apolitical technocrat swept along the Nazi regime in which he had minimal influence.
To all of them? To the countless families and children. What right did he have to take their world and break it to shambles? They had no right. They had no reason. But still they did. Bertolt is resentful. Resentful to be German. To be associated with the name “Nazi.” To be part of a culture that took the lives of millions upon millions and even screwed with the lives of those who lived under Hitler’s reign. “Neither in the old days nor now did I wish to have my son’s imagination perverted for him.” They’ve corrupted the children. Turned them against their parents by influencing them to join “Hitler youth groups.” The words youth group and Hitler in the same sentence are pure
The name Helianthus Annus comes from the Greek word Helios, meaning “sun” and anthos, meaning “flower,” annus was from Linnaeus, it was the only sunflower known to him that lived for a single season, hence it was called annus for “annual” (Mitchell, 08). The sunflower is native to primarily North America. The sunflower grows in prairies and dry open areas. It grows best in sunny moist areas. The sunflower is tolerant of high and low temperatures, although more tolerant to low temperatures with the optimum temperature range being 70-78 degrees Fahrenheit (Mitchell, 08).
Hlton Jr . 1992. GENERAL ARTICLES. Boisterous blue jays (**Edition**) [Internet]. [**Last Updated**, cited 2014 Oct 23] **Journal Info**. Available from: http://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/news/2014/06/05/of-birds-beaks-and-better-football-helmets.html
The sunflower, original only to the Americas, has become one of the most important plants throughout the world due to its adaptability, diversity, and sustainability. It is a key component in cooking, human health, soil detoxification, and has been use in medicine, art and poetry.