During the time period of the Holocaust, Simon Wiesenthal is put into a concentration camp for being Jewish. He is taken to a hospital to clean up trash. While they are going through the town to get to the hospital he makes eye contact with a cemetery for Nazi soldiers. Every grave stone in the graveyard had a sunflower upon it. In the book it said "Suddenly I envied the dead soldiers. Each had a sunflower to connect him with the living world, and butterflies to visit his grave. For me there would be no sunflower. I would be buried in a mass grave where corposes would be piled up on top of me" (The Sunflower 14). Once Simon is at the hospital he gets called inside by a nurse, she takes him to a patients rooms. In the room lay a dying Nazi named Karl. Simon is stuck there listening to this mans story about the things he’s done to Jews …show more content…
Forgiveness is not a one time thing it is something you have to deal with all the time. I 've discovered through life that feelings are strong, many people will tell you how you are suppose to feel and also I learned that most people do not want to feel the pain of the event that happened to them repeatedly. In this case we are talking about forgiveness to Karl for the things he did in the holocaust. Though it may be difficult I would say that I forgave him and after he passed away I would have found reasons to truly forgive him. Forgiveness is a process. You can still feel the pain, see the events behind your eyes, and feel the loss of the people around you but you have to find a way to forgive. People think that if you forgive someone you are forgetting or saying hey I would hang out with this person now because we’re cool but thats not at all what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is righting the wrong for yourself because you want the injustice you feel to leave. It’s acknowledging to that there a wrong that was done to you and you decide how you want to think about it not anyone
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
He should not have forgiven him because, “One soldier got up from the bench and looked at us as if we were animals in a zoo” (Wiesenthal 20). “Rectifying a misdeed is a matter to be settled between the perpetrator and this victim” (Wiesenthal 54). This shows only a small portion of what the Jewish people were treated as during this time. They were treated like animals, yet they are completely human. Also, an approximate eleven million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million were Polish citizens, three million were Polish Jews, and another three million were Polish Christians. A single person who was not affected by the soldiers decisions cannot represent the eleven million people who were affected. In order to achieve actual “forgiveness” he would need to speak to every single person who was
Simon was taken from Lemberg concentration camp. He was asked to attend the bedside of a dying Nazi in 1943 (Wiesenthal, 1998). The officer after confessing to a horrific crime against the Jews seeks Wiesenthal’s forgiveness. According to the text, Simon is deeply disturbed by the request and turns the request back t his fellow victims. In one of the passages at the end of book one,
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.
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.
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.
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
Life as we all know is full of disappointment and filled with disparity. Most of us are able to go through these and learn from and forgive ourselves. Yet, this isn’t always the case. People are faced with traumatic experiences that often take a long time to get over, if they ever do get over it. These experiences brew in our brain popping up at the most random points often bringing our spirits down. Although these experiences may scar us and fill us with regret and guilt, we can’t continue to live in the past and let these regrets haunt us. Self forgiveness is a key to healing and to moving on in life, no matter how hard it is.
The moment we learn to forgive and love is when we can begin to recover and move on.
Forgiving someone is a way to release us from the pain they have brought us. Justice can just be
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
Personally, I make mistakes every single day. For example, over this past winter break, my Mom bought our entire family tickets to the Seattle Boys Choir for the night I got home. Instead of going to the concert with my family I ditched them to go to a party at my high school friends house. My Mom was really hurt by my lack of recognition of her hard work to create a special memory for my family and I. All she wanted to do was spend time with me and I blew her off for something pointless. When I do something I regret, I hope that whoever afflicted would find it in their heart to see that I was sorry, and that they see that given the chance to re-do the situation, I would choose to change my actions. To be clear, I am not in the slightest defending or validating the actions of the Nazi regime during the time of the Holocaust. But as a person who has regretted certain actions or decisions I’ve made, I can understand the root of his need for forgiveness. The Nazi’s plea for forgiveness points toward his recognition of fault. Many Nazi’s were operating on the mindset that the atrocities they were committing were actually in the right. This Nazi, seeing the error in his actions, shows that he realizes what he did was wrong. For some people, the request for forgiveness isn’t enough to justify the act of giving it. In my opinion, if the person who is requesting the forgiveness is genuine in their motives, then they deserve
Not See Atrocities The act of forgiving a murderer is out of the question for most people. Simon is confronted with this very dilemma in The Sunflower. Karl, a dying Nazi, is asking forgiveness from a Jew, the narrator. The narrator leaves the dying Nazi with no answer, leaving him with an agonizing thought of whether he did or did not do the right thing.
Forgiveness is the act of releasing an offender of any wrong or hurt they may have caused you whether they deserve it or not. It is a decision to let go of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group of people. When we choose to forgive, we’re wiping the slate clean, cancelling a debt, or as I love to say, “Letting it go.” In the Bible, the Greek word for forgiveness literally means to “let it go.” This concept, “forgiveness,” is easier said than done. Majority of people find it very difficult to let go of offenses and hurts caused by others. I really do believe that most people desire to let it go, but we lack the knowledge of how to do it. As believers, we are instructed by God maintain an attitude of forgiveness.