Father, Forgive Them: A Review of Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness

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[...] It transcends also the genre of memoir: it is a study of human spirituality and thought, filed accordingly under religion/philosophy. Since the first publication of The Sunflower, hundreds of individuals have answered Wiesenthal's question. In the second English-language edition of the book, fifty-three responses are included in the symposium. These selections can be divided into three main categories: names that every reader will recognize, names that no reader will recognize, and names that readers with a background in Holocaust studies alone will truly appreciate. [...]

[...] Father, Forgive Them: A Review of Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness There is a basic purpose to the literature of Holocaust survivors: to bare witness. Many believe they survived to perform such a duty, to fulfill such a debt to those who did not. As witnesses, they record living history, for they record the history of their own lives. But what happens when a witness does more than witness? When a witness not only questions the Holocaust, but questions the state of the world? [...]

[...] He calls this spiritual forgiveness forgiveness of the political realm; the psychological realm of forgiveness, that based on an innate feeling, an innate sympathy, is another matter all together. Here he admits that he may have forgiven Karl, just as “under only slightly different circumstances, [Wiesenthal] might have forgiven the dying man . [if he] had seen his pleading and imploring eyes” (106-107). Levi and Améry's responses provide yet another insight into their experiences and histories, the men they became because of the Holocaust and the men they were or could have been. [...]