The Sunflower

Albert Speer is a former Nazi who confessed his crimes at the Nuremburg Trial and spent twenty years in prison. He says that “the court punished only my legal guilt” (245) but that his moral guilt will continue on. Having met Wiesenthal in person, Speer says that he can attest to the fact that Wiesenthal is a man who has shown compassion and grace to the guilty ones in the years since the war. Further, he says that by bringing Nazis into a position where they can confess their crimes, Wiesenthal has enabled a reconciliation to take place. 

Manès Sperber begins by exploring the question of what it means to forgive, whether it inherently requires forgetting of the crime. He suggests two possible answers from a historical perspective. The first is that “the surest and most lasting forgiveness and reconciliation is when the descendants of the evildoers and the victims bind themselves into a collective and unbreakable unity” (247). Sperber acknowledges that, in this case, time allows for new revelations of the relationship between the two groups. The second possible answer, which, he says, may be more applicable to this case, “because of the one-sidedness of the crime” (247), is a tragic situation where the victim participates in forgiveness as a form of submission to the wrongdoer.