Forgiveness In Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower

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The book The Sunflower is about the Holocaust. How the Jews were put into death and torture camps. In this story, Simon is the Jew and Karl is a Nazi soldier. Karl is on his deathbed and he wants someone to forgive him. Forgiveness is not always the right thing. People cannot always forgive someone because of how bad their actions were. Simon Wiesenthal is in this situation. He is deciding whether he should forgive Karl or not. Karl is a Nazi soldier who has killed and tortured a lot of Jews. Karl is on his deathbed, begging Simon to forgive him for what he has done to the Jews so he can die in peace. Wiesenthal should not forgive the dying Nazi because he is not competent to do, so the only ones who can forgive Karl is the victims that are dead, and it was his …show more content…
Simon can’t forgive Karl because Simon isn’t the jews that died because of him. Josek says “You would have had no right to do this in the name of people who had not authorized you to do so” (Wiesenthal 65). Just imagine if the people that Karl has killed and tortured became alive and found out that Simon forgave Karl, they won’t be impressed based on Simon's actions. Karl should not ask forgiveness to Simon, but he should ask forgiveness to the people he had hurt. Put yourself in Simon’s place “how would it seem then if you had forgiven him? Would not the dead people from Dnepropetrovsk come to you and ask “who gave you the right to forgive our murderer” (Wiesenthal 66)?. No one else may forgive Karl because they are not the Jews that Karl slaughtered. He should go ask the Jews that he killed for forgiveness because they are the only ones who can make this decision. This is what Simon should say in response to Karl that “there is no way I can forgive you, since I cannot dare not, speak in the name of the murdered Jews” (Fleischner 142). Simon can’t forgive Karl and let him die in peace after what he has done to the poor Jews that were
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