The Sunflower Simon Wiesenthal Analysis

While reading The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal, I could not help but think that the entire situation was tragic. The Nazi soldier seeking forgiveness on his deathbed, who is then only answered with silence is tragic, and the fact that Wiesenthal spends much of his mental energy questioning his own decision is tragic. He was given little time to make a decision that would stay with him for the rest of his life, and now he asks others if he made the right one. It must have felt like an otherworldly and bizarre moment in his life, one that I can hardly imagine myself in so as to begin to answer his question. “What would I have done?” Having been raised Catholic, the answer to this question at the beginning seems trivial. Of course I should forgive the young, dying Nazi soldier. They taught me in school from a young age that Jesus died on the cross to not only save the Jews from their sins, but also to save the Roman soldiers who nailed him to the cross. He forgave and saved everyone indiscriminately, and to be like him, we must do the same. However, to stop there as my final answer seems …show more content…
Knowing that it was impossible, he asked for the next best thing: forgiveness from someone would could understand the full scope of his actions. The soldier was brutally honest with Wiesenthal and himself, which to me is a sign of real regret because he did not try to accuse what he did or hide the cruelty of it. Because of his condition and the death of those from whom he desired forgiveness, I think it would be fair to offer my forgiveness to the soldier. There is nothing more he could do to repent, and it would be a mercy to ease his heart before his death. That mercy, in my opinion, would honor his victims more than offend their

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