Simon Wiesenthal. Schocken Books; 2nd Revised edition (1 Jan 1998)
It is just such an act of imaginative empathy that Simon Wiesenthal asks us to exercise in The Sunflower. The book is divided into two parts, the first being Wiesenthal’s account of his imprisonment in a concentration camp at Lemberg (Lvov). It was during this time, while on a detail to a hospital, that he was summoned to the bedside of a dying SS man (Karl). This young man had been an active participant in at least one act of the greatest conceivable cruelty against a group of Jews — involving a house, petrol, hand–grenades, rifles. . . — and was now claiming repentance and seeking some measure of forgiveness. To this end he had sought a Jew—apparently any ‘Jew’—to whom he could relate his story. Wiesenthal, having been ‘picked’, is more or less constrained by his circumstances to listen to the Nazi’s story, even though at times he is extremely reluctant to do so. It emerges as part of the account that Karl had voluntarily joined the Hitler youth — against the wishes of his father. And that his fatal wounds had been received at a moment on the battlefield when the horror of his crimes had suddenly struck home with full force, rendering him immobile fractionally before a shell achieved the same result. Wiesenthal is silent throughout the two long interviews and at the end leaves Karl in silence without granting the dying man his wish. Nevertheless, despite the appalling circumstances in which he is living, Wiesenthal finds time to wonder if he did the right thing. Should he have made at least some gesture that might have acknowledged the man’s apparent contrition? Should he have afforded the remotest crumb of comfort to another man who like himself was in extremis?
There is a second part to the account, in which Wiesenthal visits Karl’s mother in Stuttgart in 1946. He finds that she is widowed and living in miserable conditions. Again he is silent in so far that he does not disabuse her memory of her ‘good’ son.
Wiesenthal’s question is: did he do the right thing, and how would we have reacted? These are the questions posed to 42 contributors to the book—and to us. The contributors are drawn from a wide range of faiths and professions, though with a preponderance of Jewish and Christian responses.
Before reading The Sunflower I was curious to know what the circumstances of the encounter could have been. What could the dying Nazi say, relative to what he had done, that could in any way change our response to his acts? A fairly consistent pattern soon emerges from the essays. The first, and most important, being: that I can only be forgiven by those that I have wounded or wronged. ‘Sin is specific . . . not a generalised amorphous act. If I sin, I cannot go to someone else who has a remote connection with the person I have harmed and ask that third party for forgiveness’ (Deborah Lipstadt). This being the case, murder clearly falls into a special category: ‘The problem of the dying perpetrator was the fact that the only human persons who could forgive him were dead’ (Franklin Littell). In the Jewish perspective, making peace with God comes second to reconciliation with the wronged party. There is thus no possibility of Wiesenthal’s forgiving Karl.
What though of the possibility of a humanitarian or perhaps specifically Christian response, to the dying man, given the extreme nature of his predicament? Perhaps, but was it not an act of monstrous selfishness on Karl’s part to inflict his story on Wiesenthal—himself in the most miserable and precarious position? In the camps it was always very dangerous for a prisoner to be noticed in any way, and here was one absent for hours from a detail. It is also clear that Wiesenthal stood for ‘a Jew’, and was addressed as such, rather than as an individual. Could it not be concluded that had Karl got his forgiveness, the husk of ‘the Jew’ could then be discarded? Does this sound too harsh? Think again of the children in flames. Surely Karl’s redemption could only have begun at the moment of his dawning horror at the true consequences of National Socialist policies, when something from his Catholic upbringing must have screamed at him ‘This is evil’. At which point he could have deserted, perhaps actively sought to help the Jews. At the very least one feels that on that fateful day he could have miss–aimed his rifle.
There is a further aspect to any notion of forgiveness in such terrible times, deserving a full quote from Moshe Bejski:
Would not the overwhelming evil and brutality of the times make it repugnant to forgive one amongst a multitude of killers? How could Simon Wiesenthal forgive this man when his fellow torturers and murderers where starving, beating, and killing thousands and thousands of other Jews? Would it not also be a betrayal to the memory of the dead, of the orphaned children, of the bereaved, and of the survivors who can never wholly forget what they endured?
The time was not right, and it’s doubtful that it ever would have been right. Forgiveness would ‘cultivate sensitiveness toward the murderer at the price of insensitiveness to the victim’ (Cynthia Ozick). However, Yossi Klein Halevy councils against arguing from the fact of unforgivable crimes, to the refusal to work towards reconciliation between peoples. And Martin Marty comments on the unfair consequences of continuing to insist upon a nation feeling its guilt for the past crimes of its people. That way a corrosive and resentful bitterness can only be fostered. New generations particularly must be allowed to feel a pride in their achievements.
As to my response to Wiesenthal’s question: he need not have scrupled over his decision; all the moral cards, so to speak, were in his hands, and he had a fundamental right to express opprobrium in his gesture of silence. He demonstrated also both compassion and dignity in not cursing the dying man. Regarding his response to Karl’s mother, I’m inclined to agree with Andrè Stein that she should have been told the truth: ‘The magnitude of the crime and the broad popular participation in it allows no consideration other than the welfare of the survivors, the sacredness of the victims’ memory, and the prevention of future genocides.’ But it cannot be stressed too much that none of us can be certain how we would have reacted at the time. There is an unbridgeable gulf fixed between how we might have reacted, and any possible ‘right’ action.
Endnote
The sunflower of the title derives from the bizarre sight of a Nazi graveyard where each grave had a sunflower placed on it. This was seen by Wiesenthal and his fellow prisoners on their way between the camp and the hospital
Peter Hart
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