The Sunflower

Mary Gordon approaches Wiesenthal’s question from the perspective of the Catholic faith, the religion of the SS man who is seeking forgiveness. First, she acknowledges that forgiveness can be a positive thing, but not when accompanied by forgetting, “because only a recognition of guilt by both sides can begin to prevent repetition of the same heinous deed” (152).

She goes on to say that it is not within the SS man’s power to establish Simon as the symbolic representative of all those people whom the Nazi’s victimized. Further, she states that, being trained in the Catholic faith, Karl should be aware that, when the sinner is guilty of public crime, he must first “publicly acknowledge guilt, and only then ask for absolution” (153).

Mary Gordon sums up by asserting that, on a personal level, it is not within Simon’s power to forgive, because doing so “would be theft of the wounded person’s right to forgive or not to forgive” (153). Further, for Simon to give ritual forgiveness, he must be given this authority by his own community, and the atonement should match the crime, which, in this case, would be that Karl “be placed in the camps, so that he could die in the miserable circumstances of those in whose name he is asking forgiveness” (153).