Congregation Schaarai Zedek

Religious School

A. R.[name anonymised]

April 2, 2002

Dear Mr Wiesenthal,

Each year, as part of our Holocaust unit of study, we ask students to read The Sunflower. The second part of the assignment is for them to write what they would have done in your “shoes”.

I thought you might be interested in what 13 year olds today had to say.

Shalom,

A. R.[name anonymised]

A. R.[name anonymised]

Congregation Schaarai Zedek

Religious School

3303 W. Swann Avenue

Tampa, FL 33609-4699

USA

Wien,

June 10, 2002

SW/Tr

Dear Ms. R. [name anonymised],

Thank you very much for sending me your students’ papers about The Sunflower – and, above all, for having asked them to read my book and to think about the issues it raises. I am indeed interested in what young people (13 year olds, in your case) have to say on the subject of guilt and forgiveness, but I must apologize to you and your students for not replying sooner. Because of my advanced age, I only spend a few hours in the office each day, and since I do try to read all of the many personal responses to The Sunflower I receive, it sometimes takes some time before I can reply. I hope for your understanding.

Dear young friends,

I was pleased to hear that you have read my book, The Sunflower, and given thought to the behavior of the dying soldier and my reaction to him. I believe that after thinking about how you would act in such a situation, you will no longer be able to regard the Holocaust as just something that happened in the past and which really has nothing to do with you.

There is always the danger that something similar to the Holocaust can happen again – when people become hateful and fanatic enough and when they let themselves be convinced to do things that their consciences tells them

is wrong. In the end, however, each individual carries the responsibility for his own actions, as the soldier realized on his death bed. His sense of guilt was almost too much for him to bear – so he wanted me to take some of it away from him. But how could I? Those he killed were irrevocably dead. He simply had to live – and die – with the knowledge that what he had done could not be made undone. Nothing I could say or do would change that.

My response to the dying soldier would be no different today – and I am now 93 years old – than it was then. How could I forgive something that was done to someone else; I cannot, and could not, forgive on behalf of the other victims. Just as I do not believe in collective blame I also do not believe in collective pardon. The issue of responsibility and forgiveness can only be dealt with individually.

At the trials of Nazi criminals after the war, I seldom came upon SS-men who admitted to their crimes – much less regretted them. They usually tried to play down their own part in the murders or in other crimes. Many claimed that they had only been “acting on orders.”

I thank each and every one of you for taking the time to think about all of this and for writing down your thoughts and sharing them with me. Your responses are very valuable to me and I am saving them all in a big “Sunflower-file”. I hope that you will keep up your interest in what happened to the Jewish people in the past, because it is important to keep the memory of the innocent victims alive and, by learning the lessons of the past, to help prevent a repetition of our tragedy.

Sincerely,

[Handwritten]

Simon Wiesenthal

Dear Mr. Wiesenthal,

It must have been a hard decision not to forgive the dying SS man . I would have done the same thing you did, because the only people who can forgive him were the people he killed. Also I think that if he wasn’t on his death bed he would have continued to kill more Jews. The thing I would have done differently would be to tell him why I couldn’t forgive him, because it might have given him some satisfaction to get it all out, and by listening you helped him. I think he was selfish because he killed a lot of people and when the things he did caught up with him he felt like he was being persecuted and not the Jews. He is just regretting what he did because it ended up killing him. The statement, “What comes around goes around”, is really proven true in this book. Another thing I would have done differently is when you went to talk to Karl’s mom you should have told her the truth instead of letting her believe the wrong thing. What’s done is done and you can’t change it, and you may believe something different, but that’s the way I feel. I hope you feel you did the right thing and don’t have any regrets.

Sincerely,

M. K.[name anonymised]

E. S.[name anonymised]

The Sunflower

I think Simon Wiesenthal made a good decision when he walked away from the dying SS man. This man wanted forgiveness from a Jew for killing other Jews. By forgiving the SS man, that does not bring the Jews back to life.

Nobody is a born a murderer, they have got to pick that up along the way by some of decisions they make. And if every nazi feels bad for what they did to all the Jews and we forgive them, then we are forgiving the nazis for what they did to our people. Simon also had no authority to forgive him. Even if he did have the authority to give the SS man forgiveness, why should the Jews let a nazi murderer die in peace while at that same moment hundreds of additional Jews were dying from much worst scenarios. At least when this man died he had a nicely planted sunflower atop his grave in his one-man coffin. The Jews are packed so tightly together when they were laid in a pile of dirt .

We could not forgive this man because he helped Hitler come to his reign and enabled him to have followers to kill all those people. Nobody is a born murderer, so many others are also looking for forgiveness as they traveled through the concentration camps and watched the Jews die. If he really wanted to be forgiven he should have dropped out of the SS the day he killed the family and started helping the Jews. The fact that he still went on killing after that means we shouldn’t forgive him. Yet maybe, if he joined the Hitler Youth because some of his friends did and enlisted because he was scared that if he didn’t enlist they would come looking for him maybe we could understand. But, according to the Jewish Talmud you should sacrifice yourself before you kill another man therefore we should not offer forgiveness.

E. S.[name anonymised]

The Sunflower By: Simon Wiesenthal

A young Jew is taken from a death-camp to a makeshift army hospital. He is led to the bedside of a Nazi soldier whose head is completely swathed in bandages. The dying Nazi blindly extends his hand toward the Jew, and in a cracked whisper begins to speak. The Jew listens silently while the Nazi confesses to having participated in the burning alive of an entire village of Jews. The soldier, terrified of dying with this burden of guilt, begs absolution from the Jew. Having listened to the Nazi ’s story for several hours torn between horror and compassion for the dying man – the Jew finally walks out of the room without speaking.

I would have done the same thing. What else could have been done? Would you stay there and comfort him? The Jew is in a hard spot, so is the Nazi . The Nazi was probably oppressed by the people he loved, followed and believed in. If he didn’t join he wouldn’t feel safe in his own country. What can you say to

someone who just confessed to you that he killed hundreds of your people? The Jew as young as this one cannot think of what to do in such situations. For him there was nothing he could have said that wouldn’t have made him or the Nazi feel any better. I think it was an O.K. choice for the situation. If I were in that situation I would have done the same thing. The person who just asked for his forgiveness tortured him. He had to eat grass and sleep on the ground because of these people. He was tricked into hating the Jews. Hitler blamed all of Germany’s troubles on the Jews so he would probably not have gone against his entire country. The Jew lost many of his friends to these people. Josek was one of these people. How was he going to forgive the Man who killed Josek? There was very little time to make his decision. Therefore acting on instinct he made a quick, witty, solid decision to leave the Nazi on his deathbed. The guilt of the Nazi was not relieved. So the Nazi was left on his deathbed to die and wither in the corners of his own dark world in the corners of Hell(or whatever those Germans believed in)