19. The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal: Featured Review

 

 

Reviewed by JoAnn S.

Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp in Lemborg, Poland, passed a Polish cemetery on a forced journey to a Technical School which had been turned into a makeshift hospital.  On each grave site a sunflower had been planted, each standing “straight as a soldier on parade.”  He envied those lying in their graves because they had been properly buried, a sunflower marking their graves, with butterflies flying overhead. He predicted his burial site would be a mass grave where, “No sunflower would ever bring light into my darkness, and no butterflies would dance above my dreadful tomb.”

 

After arriving at the make-shift hospital, he was secretly led by a nurse to a dying SS member’s bedside.  The soldier recalled his past experiences with the Hitler youth group and his volunteering for army duty. The SS soldier described “the terrible thing” he had done and said, “Some time elapsed before I realized what guilt I had incurred.”

 

The soldier then asked Simon to forgive him.  Simon didn’t.  He went back to his camp and told his friends, Josek and Arthur about the encounter.  Arthur said they would all have the “luxury” of discussing forgiveness after the war.  Josek agreed that according to the Talmud, he should not have and did not have the right to forgive on behalf of the others who had suffered.  Simon began to doubt his choice to leave the soldier without offering the forgiveness he sought.  

Both Arthur and Josek died, and Simon was shuffled to different work camps until he was sent to Block 6 where death was imminent.  He there met a Polish Catholic Jew who had studied to be a priest.  He asked Bolek his questions about his not forgiving the soldier.  Bolek said Simon was in a position to grant absolution since the victim or a religious representative was not present.  Simon’s dilemma remained unresolved. 

After the war he joined a commission to investigate war crimes. After seeing a field of sunflowers, he decided to visit the soldier’s mother.  After the encounter, his doubts remained.  In the concluding paragraph, the author writes, “You, who have just read this sad and tragic episode in my life, can mentally change places with me and ask yourself the question, “What would I have done?”

Because the act of forgiveness has complex philosophical, moral, religious and/or spiritual aspects, it requires and deserves a thoughtful analysis of our beliefs. In the 1998 revised and expanded version of the book I read, a symposium of 53 essays discussing forgiveness follow Wiesenthal’s book.  The selections were written by a diverse group including the Buddhist spiritual leader, The Dalai Lama; Theodore Hesburg, president emeritus of Notre Dame; Sven Akalaj, a Jewish ambassador to the United Nations from Bosnia-Herzogovina; Islamic theological scholar, Smail Balic; American novelist Mary Gordon; and Albert Speer, a high ranking Nazi who testified at the Nuremberg trials. 

If one decides to answer the author’s concluding question, the essays should be read and contemplated. The insights may prove informative, insightful, thought-provoking, but possibly, transformational.  I suggest there is no one correct answer for everyone, but there might be answers to guide individuals as each makes choices involving forgiving throughout life.