Sep.19, 1968

Mr

Robert Neumann

La Giogica

Locarno-Monti

Switzerland

Dear Mr Neumann!

I am contacting you with a request for an opinion. It concerns the problem of forgiveness and who is authorised to forgive. This is the subject of my new book, which I am taking the liberty of sending you in manuscript by the same post, with the great request that you find the time to read it. It is only 120 typewritten pages and concerns a true experience.

It is actually an eternally valid problem that is not limited to the Nazi era but is particularly topical now. I have already received statements from Carl Zuckmayer, Friedrich Heer, Albrecht Goes, Abraham Heschel, Prof. Ernst Simon and Dr Bruins Slot. Arthur Koestler, Francois Mauriac, Jacques Maritain, Manès Sperber, Rolf Hochhut and a number of other personalities whom I have invited to comment on this topic have also agreed to do so.

These statements are appended to the book.

Dear Mr Neumann, I hope that your time will allow you to fulfill my request.

With warmest regards

Yours sincerely

SW

Oct 3, 1968

RECEIVED

Oct. 7, 1968

Mr

Simon Wiesenthal

Mestrozigasse 5

A-1190 Vienna

Dear Mr Simon Wiesenthal,

My great esteem for you as a documentator and brilliant researcher compels me to be honest. The story is certainly "competent" but not a masterpiece – and if it were a masterpiece itself, it would not find a publisher in this Germany because it would not find any buyers. In our world, only the document and not the fiction is effective, if at all. This means that I could not give you a statement on the problem of forgiveness in the appendix to this story – it would be misplaced there and "devalued by fiction". But if you would like to make a separate volume with only such statements, please let me know – I will then be happy to participate in this circle.

I will return your manuscript to you by separate post.

At the same time, thank you very much for the documentation on the old Nazis in the GDR. I will take it with me to Geneva the day after tomorrow, where the Czech writers are to meet the authors of the occupying powers for the first time within the framework of the International Executive of PEN.

With best wishes

Yours

Robert Neumann

Oct. 8, 1968

Mr

Robert Neumann

CH-6605 Locarno-Monti

Dear Mr Neumann!

Thank you very much for your letter and for returning the manuscript. I have received both with thanks.

After all, I would like to thank you for taking the trouble to read my manuscript. However much I regret that you decline to comment, I would like to make a point. This is a real and true experience and not fiction. My lack of routine in reproducing this experience has probably given you this impression. I even have a living witness to this experience. He is the chief engineer of the city of Tel Aviv, Ing. Porath, who was in the same barrack with me at the time.

I am glad that the documentation about the Nazi propagandists in the GDR could be useful to you.

Yours sincerely

SW