This book was not only about the Holocaust, but also about the question of justice and forgiveness. I found this amazing that a person would wrestle with these two words, enough to survive the great tragedy and then write about them. In my own opinion, I believe that these are two separate words, “forgiveness” and “justice”. I believe that you may want to forgive someone, although you would like to see justice fall upon them. If the SS man did not die would Simon also want justice to fall upon the SS man?
Simon named his book “The Sunflower”, because it represented the dead Nazi soldiers that will be buried in a grave, and the Jewish people will never have this honor. Simon used the Sunflower to represent the dead soldiers, and they will have someone to visit their grave, unlike himself who will have no living relatives. Simon indicated that he was jealous of the dead soldiers by saying, “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 will be no sunflower” (14).
The thought of forgiving the dying SS man, weighted heavy on Simon’s mind, and he consulted his two Jewish friends, Josek and Author. Josek believed that Simon did not have a right to forgive the dying SS man on the bases that he would be forgiving a man for something he directly did to someone else by saying, “When you were telling us about your meeting with the SS man, I feared at first that you had really forgiven him. You would have had no right to do this in the name of the people who had not authorized you to do so. What people have done to you yourself, you can, if you like, forgive and forget. That is your own affair. But it would have been a terrible sin to burden your conscience with other people’s suffering” (65). Later in the book, Joesk said, “If you had forgiven him, you would never have forgiven yourself all your life” (66).
Simon’s friend Arthur replied to the question of forgiving the SS man as, “Are you suddenly frightened to look death in the eye, just because you have seen an SS man dying? How many Jews have you seen killed? Did that make you shout out in the night? Death is our constant companion, have you forgotten that? It doesn’t even spare the SS” (69). Author felt unjust about even the question of forgiving a man that represented so many deaths of the Jewish people.
I feel that it is a burden on the victim to ask for forgiveness. This wrestled in Simon’s mind enough for him to write a book that asks the question “The crux of the matter is, of course, the question of forgiveness. Forgetting is something that time alone takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of violation and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision” (98). Simon ends his story with the final question, “What would I have done?” (98).
Cythia Ozick did recognize that the SS man had recognized his wrong, and felt remorse by saying, “Consider this dying SS man. Is he not unlike so many others? He, at least, shows the marks of conscience, of remorse, of sickness at his life. He is not arrogant; he is not self-justifying, he felt disgust at everything he has witnessed, he recoils from everything he has committed. He is a man at a moral turning. Ought he not to be delivered over to his death—to use the old Christian word---Shriven” (218)? Maybe this is why Simon wrestled with this in his mind enough to write the book. The SS man felt remorse. When a person feels remorse for what they have done, does this help you want to forgive them?
Although, I personally feel that Simon wanted to forgive the SS man. Simon also wanted justice for all those who suffered. He spent the remainder of his life working towards justice. I bet he also spent the rest of his life wrestling with the word forgiveness.
Work Cited
Wiesenthal, Simon, Harry J. Cargas, and Bonny V. Fetterman. The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. New York: Schocken, 1997. Print.