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The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (Newly Expanded Paperback Edition)

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I am writing this review the day after Shimon Wiesenthal died. He was ninety- six years old. Thousands of words have been written about him and his life- task. Certainly one of the major contributions he made was to make people aware of the enormity of the crime which was the Holocaust. After the war many wished to forget, but he out of a strong sense of duty to those who had died, to those who had been murdered and suffered so much , made it his business to make the world remember. And he too made his business to bring to justice those who committed the crime. And as he said many times he did this not only for the victims, but for the future generations of mankind so that such an evil would never come again not only to Jews but to all of humanity.
He personally made a major contribution to bringing to justice more than one thousand war criminals, including Eichmann,Stangl , and the Nazi who took Anne Frank from her home and sent her to her death.
In this work he ponders the question of forgiveness . He is asked by a Nazi who repents of his crimes for forgiveness. And the question the book asks is whether such forgiveness should be given. It seems to me the answer to this question is given by something which Wiesenthal himself wrote. He wrote that while it might be possible to forgive someone for an injury done to oneself, one has no right to forgive for others. It is those who have been murdered who need to be requested forgiveness of. But one and one half - million Jewish children were not given the chance to answer. I think that no one has the right to answer in their name.
Wiesenthal was after the war urged by his wife to take up his profession as architect . He could not . He dedicated himself to the memory of the victims, and to having justice done. He explained this as follows. He said that when the day would come and he would die he would go upstairs. And there he would meet those who had not survived the Shoah. They would crowd around him , and say, " You were lucky, you had life all those years. What did you do with them" And Wiesenthal said, " I would say to them. I did not forget you."
May the memory of this great Jew and human being be a blessing for all of us.

Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing. But even years after the war had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place?

The first time I read this book I struggled with the questions of what I would do in Wiesenthal's situation. Reading all of the views of the contributors did not resolve this matter in my mind. Subsequently to reading this book, I purchase a copy of the book An Encounter With A Prophet which favors forgiveness and gives a unique prayer to achieve forgiveness even when you do not want to forgive. This author made sense but I still could not answer the questions in Wiesenthal `s book.

Then one night walking home from work, I was attacked by a mugger. Coming up from behind me, out of the shadows, the mugger managed to hid me twice on the back of my head before I knew what was happening. Due to space limitations I will skip the details of what followed suffice it to say when the ambulance picked me up off the street , I was drenched in my own blood.

On the way to the hospital my mind started to race. Having grown up as a fighter, I vowed to find this man and evoke some Charles Bronson style justice. As I engaged in this type of thinking, in my mind's eye I could feel and see the mugger sneaking up behind me getting ready to hit me - something they call a flashback a frightening experience to say the least.

As this flash back phenomena continued, it occurred to me to pray the unique prayer suggested in that book An Encounter With A Prophet, I started saying this prayer repeatedly. The flashback dissolved. However, every time I stopped praying, my mind immediately started planning more Bronson style justice and the flashback phenomena would returned. This phenomena gave me the continued motivation to pray for the S O B all that night and for the next few days. (This strange prayer let's you call the person an S O B while you are praying)

When I returned to work I was surprised that I could, against all advise to the contrary, walk home down the very same street at night without experiencing any fear whatsoever. The only feeling I had for the mugger was compassion and all fear was gone.

Now I have no question of how to resolve the issue which still plagues Wiesenthal. Forgiveness is the answer.

This is some powerful material. Wiesenthal presents the story of a Nazi begging for forgiveness on his deathbed. Should he as a Jew grant this forgiveness? He deals with all the emotional and spiritual ambivalence he feels over this situation. What would you do? is the ultimate question he asks. Don't read this late at night if you want to get some sleep. I found myself tormented by the issue of forgiveness after reading this tale. I can not answer what I would do because I have never been in any situation as horrible as that. But this is a book that should be read by would be philosophers and moralizers as it features Wiesenthal's heart rending tale and follows it with essays by numerous writers of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. They all must wrestle with this issue. This is a book that should be required reading in universities if not high schools. It might actually provoke students to think. And surely that would be a good thing.

I was given this book to read for my Fundamental Ethics course last semester. At first I thought, "What a chore," but then as I immersed myself in the reading of this book, I began to get involved in the reading. I could see the sights, smell the air, hear the sounds, and touch the people that Simon was surrounded by, I felt I was one of them. Very few times in my life has a book had such a captivating effect on me. It also resembles the book Night, by Elie Weisel, in which they share some of the same experiences and captivate the reader to the such a profound extent.

While reading I found myself, not only captivated by the words, but also at the meaning behind the words. "I could easily be in his position, or something similar," I thought. Simon Weisenthal demonstrates a very real dilema and view of forgiveness which we often take for granted, or many times we don't think about. He is faced with a problem and does not know what to do about it.

He made an ethical decision that had consequences he had to answer for. Also, there arises the question of religion into the whole sphere of the dilema.

As a result, Simon Weisenthal ends the first part of the book with certain questions. The second part of the book are the replies by quite a number of religious and political leaders, theologians, philosophers, psychologists, holocaust survivors, lawyers, and many different professionals, giving witness to what they would have done, if confronted with the same situation as Simon.

The book is so profound that one can see it interacting in one's daily life. From the little things that we take for granted, to those that we make a "big deal" out of, we will see with new eyes, after having read this book.

It is a book that is for every reader and, I recommend be read several times in one's life. In other words, the book is living thought and helps tp renew not only one's knowledge, but also, experience.

Simon Wiesenthal authored a first rate book, one that should be read by everyone the world over, for it deals with problems that all societies struggle with in trying to achieve peace: forgiveness, justice, and grace. To what extent are we enabled to offer forgiveness on behalf of another, especially when the crimes committed are of almost unspeakable atrocity? Wiesenthal's story is gripping, moving, and haunting, a true encounter that provokes repeated pondering and contemplation. I don't have the 1997 revised version of the book containing the responses of 46 people in a symposium discussion, but I can say that in the original 32 responses, I read very few that contained a cogency and depth equal to that of Wiesenthal's story. While a handful were good, most were evasive. I therefore found the second half of the book to be a disappointment. THE SUNFLOWER, though, is worth getting just to read Wiesenthal's treatment, which is first rate. Philip Yancey also offers some thoughtful comments in a chapter from his book of essays entitled I WAS JUST WONDERING (beginning on page 70 under the title "A Haunting Deathbed Confession".)

The title of the book comes from the tall, bright sunflowers placed upon the German soldier's graves who are buried just outside the concentration camp where the Jewish prisoners must pass daily on their way to work projects. Each grave had one "as straight as a soldier on parade . . . . " The tall golden flowers stand in contrast to the unmarked, unidentifiable mass graves, in which most of the prisoners will end up
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This revised edition was issued in honor of the twentieth anniversary of its publication. It is divided into two sections: an extraordinary request to Simon for forgiveness by a dying 21 old SS man and the 53 responses (ten from the original volume) from prominent theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China, and Tibet. Their answers reflect the teachings of their diverse beliefs - Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, secular, and agnostic - and remind us that Wiesenthal's question is not limited to events of the past. Certainly there are fundamental lessons that are as essential today as they were 60 years ago.

Who can forgive crimes committed against others asks Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the most significant Jewish theologians of the 20th century.

Are there any similarities between the national guilt faced by the German people for the Holocaust and ours for the institution of slavery and the genocide of Native Americans wonders Martin E. Marty, religious scholar and Lutheran Pastor.

Are followers in committing atrocities as guilty as their leaders inquires Dith Pran, photographer and subject of the film, "The Killing Fields," about Cambodian genocide.

Is silence its own answer if we could but learn to listen to it? Are there questions that are unanswerable queries of the soul, matters too awe-full for human response, too demonic for profound rational resolution poses Hubert Locke, Dean Emeritus, Evans School of Public Policy, University of Washington

By not forgiving do we somehow remain victims wonders Harold Kushner, Rabbi and best-selling author.

One day as part of a detail working at a hospital, Simon it taken by a nurse to see a dying young SS officer named Karl Seidl, who wants forgiveness and absolution from a Jew for the terrible things he had done, in particular an incident in which he murdered 150 Jewish men, women and children who were herded into a small house that was set on fire and when those trying to escape or jump to safety were all shot. Simon has no answer and leaves. He refuses a package of clothing the officer wants him to have telling her to ship it to the deceased's mother.

During the next two years, Wiesenthal shared this story with fellow camp mates, ending each time with: Was my silence at the bedside of the dying Nazi right or wrong?

After the war, Simon visits the officer's mother living in a bombed-out apartment in Stuttgart. All she has left are the memories of her "good son." Wiesenthal wrestles with whether he should tell her the truth about her son, but leaves saying nothing about the atrocities he took part in. She is allowed to keep her memories.

Simon addresses the reader with this critical question: "You, who have just read this sad and tragic episode in my life, can mentally change places with me and ask yourself the crucial question, 'What would I have done?'"

Simon Wiesehthal died on September 21, 2005 at the age of 96. He and his wife Cyla lost 89 relatives during the Holocaust. Simon helped to bring more than 1100 war criminals to justice, including Eichmann, Stangl, and the Nazi who took Anne Frank from her home and sent her to her death. He has been honored with numerous awards for his work, including "Commander of the Order of Orange" in the Netherlands, "Commendatore della Repubblica" in Italy, a gold medal for humanitarian work by the United States Congress, the Jerusalem Medal in Israel, and sixteen honorary doctorates. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, located in Los Angeles, is named in honor of him.

The Sunflower will force you to think deeply about issues we rarely discuss but which are essential to building and maintaining relationships, with each other and with ourselves.

simon wiesenthal is a brilliant, haunted writer who conveys chillingly the perceived moral dilemma he faced as a dying SS officer begged him for forgiveness for his crimes againt the jewish people during the second world war. while it seems obvious to this reader that the proper response would have been a prompt "rot in hell", it does give more than enough food for thought to anyone who realizes the enormity of the holocaust's unpleasant moral implications for all philosophers and sociologists who endeavor to know the actual nature of man as opposed to wishful thinking a la rousseau or kant. wiesenthal's accomplishments and inspiring life's work (much like frankl's) since his horrendous experience as one of the many victims of this unbelievable historical atrocity gives hope to all students of the human condition even in the shadow of auschwitz and unspeakable evil. a treasure of a book.

The Sunflower is the story of a dying Nazi SS soldier who calls Simon Wiesenthal, the author, into his hospital room and asks for forgiveness for the crimes he has committed. Wiesenthal leaves the room in silence without fufilling the Nazi's dying wish: to be forgivien by a Jew. The book also describes Simon Wiesenthal's own experiences in the concentration camps and instances where he was a vicitm of an anti-semitic movment. This book greatly moved me and opened my eyes to even more amazement and wonderment that I have have ever known about World War II and the Holocaust. It was an excellent read and yet a mildly depressing one, too.

I found my self in conflict over the issue of forgiveness after reading this book. Then I read the book An Encounter With A Prophet where the author gave me a different way to look at forgiveness - not as something we did out of the goodness of our hearts but as something we do to prevent harboring resentments and experiencing flashbacks of the harms we have suffered.

I relish this volume for the story that Simon Wiesenthal shares of his Holocaust experiences.

Much of his 98-page account covers his unwilling audience with a dying SS man named Karl who had asked the nun on duty to fetch a Jewish prisoner, any Jewish prisoner. He did not tell her why. Once Wiesenthal entered, Karl began a long tale of how he had come to this place, what he had done and why he wanted forgiveness. What Karl said and how Wiesenthal reacted are riveting. Years later, the latter traveled to Stuttgart to meet Karl's mother, yet did not tell her what he had learned about her son. I could have done no better in his place.

I found the details surrounding his encounter equally riveting. One day, Wiesenthal was ordered to join a concentration camp work detail that hiked into the town of Lemberg, where he had attended Technical High School in Sapiehy Street. By coincidence, the guards brought the enslaved men through the streets he had once walked as a free young man, to the very building where he had attended school. As he walked, he thought of events, both recent ones in the camp and more distant events in Lemberg and at his school. He recounts them all.

Readers also learn of Wiesenthal's friends Arthur and Josek, neither of whom survived, who comforted and consoled one another and him, talking philosophically under the most inhuman circumstances in order to maintain their humanity.

The reactions of various famed writers, religious leaders and others are less important. Some are nevertheless compelling by virtue of their authorship or unique content. These include replies by Holocaust survivors Jean Amery, Moshe Bejske, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Primo Levi and Nechana Tec, two of whom later committed suicide, and Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. I was especially struck by Theologian Franklin H. Littell's call for increased awareness "of the earnest nature of the choice between good and evil, between innocence and guilt."

This book has been important for 25 years. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001 it carries increased weight. Alyssa A. Lappen