The Sunflower

Alan Berger focuses on a particular detail of Wiesenthal’s story, the fact that “Simon was twice silent: once in the presence of the dying Nazi, and once in the presence of the dead man’s mother” (118). He recognizes that the first act of silence, Simon’s denial of forgiveness to Karl, was justified in that it respected both the dead Jewish victims and the “sanctity of forgiveness” (118). He also acknowledges that Simon’s decision when visiting Karl’s mother to remain reticent about her son’s crimes was an act of grace.

Berger goes on to draw on Jewish teaching on forgiveness, pointing out that Judaism distinguishes between sins committed against God and those committed against humans, and indicates that a person only has the right to forgive sins committed against himself, not those committed against someone else. Furthermore, Berger points out, the Nazi’s desire to receive forgiveness from any Jewish person is a further perpetration of the misdeed of seeing all Jewish people as part of an “amorphous, undifferentiated mass” (119).

Berger explores the question of whether Karl’s repentance was sincere. Based on the Hebrew understanding of “repentance” as “a turning away from evil, a turning toward Torah” (119), he points out that Karl only turned away from his own evil behavior when he had no other options left.