The Sunflower

Mark Goulden, writing this response in the 1970s, begins by reviewing the magnitude of the crimes committed against the Jews of Europe under the Nazis. He then goes on to observe how, in just three decades, the German nation seems to have moved out of the shadow of international shame and dissociated itself from the Nazi regime, as if “no living German was ever a Nazi” (157).

Goulden addresses the implications of forgiveness. First, he questions who has the right to forgive, whether it should be God alone or the individual victim. In any case, he asserts that there can be no acceptable reason for forgiving people who made a public ritual of torture and murder and that no person can have the authority to pardon such large-scale acts of evil against others.

Returning to the very personal question of what he would have done in the situation in which Wiesenthal found himself, Goulden asserts that he would have considered what “young Nazi [might] have become had he survived or, indeed, if Germany had won the war” (158). With this in mind, Goulden says he would have walked away without giving forgiveness and been happy that he had died. 

Hans Habe discusses specifically the question of forgiveness as it relates to murderers, where the direct victims are no longer alive to give the forgiveness. He asserts that morals, the actual prohibition of murder for example, are outside of the hands of any individual. The murderer has committed a crime that is more than merely an act against a victim; it is a universal act of evil. He goes on to point out that to say Karl was not born a murderer is of no particular ethical value, for few people who commit murder are thus born.

He goes on to address the idea that extenuating circumstances might play a part in establishing the extent of guilt of the person who takes another’s life. He takes exception to the “excuse that the system relieves the individual of responsibility” (161), stating that it is not heroic to defy evil authority, it is only one’s duty.

Habe points out that two concepts, love and justice, are historically held as disparate and incompatible approaches to evil. He asserts that both are of God and that the goal for humanity is to find a way to bring both love and justice together. In response to Wiesenthal’s question of whether he was right or wrong in not forgiving the dying man, Habe states that the response is immaterial. What is important, he says, is that Simon “did not hate the dying murderer, and that is a beginning” (162). In conclusion, Habe states that the combination of love and justice are the only means to “life without hatred” (163). 

Yossi Klein Halevi begins by asserting that nobody who experienced the Holocaust has the right to evaluate the behavior of those who endured the victimization that occurred during that time. He suggests that, once the Nazi regime ended in 1945, the survivors “assumed the burden of moral normalcy” (163), and from this point on they are subject to the same moral standards as the rest of society. Thus, Halevi begins his assessment of Simon’s behavior with the visit to Karl’s mother after the war was over, saying that Simon demonstrated a grace toward her, which Halevi, was unable to find within himself for many years after the war.

Halevi says that, for his own part, he spent many decades avoiding Germany at all costs, refusing even to buy German products. He recalls his first return to the country in 1989, at the time of the opening of the Berlin Wall. He encountered a group of German activists engaged in current political activists who named their organization after a German Jew killed during the Holocaust, thus “offering their notion of altruistic politics to his memory” (165). Asking these young people whether they were excited about the Wall coming down, they laughed, as if “they couldn’t allow themselves to share their people’s celebration” (165).

Halevi concludes by taking as a lesson from Simon’s treatment of Karl’s mother, the idea that it is sometimes important to transcend the evils of the past. 

Arthur Hertzberg begins by taking an account of the SS man’s life, how he was raised in a devout Christian home as a pious Catholic, how he joined the Hitler Youth and later the SS in defiance of his father, how he followed orders to kill even when he would not have been punished for declining such assignments.

Hertzberg goes on to question the very justice of God during the Holocaust, remembering the God’s words to Abraham in the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah that God would not destroy a people if there were ten righteous people among them. He states, “The God who had allowed the Holocaust did not, and does not, have the standing to forgive the monsters who had carried out the murders” (168).

Hertzberg acknowledges that Simon’s sparing Karl’s mother of the details of Karl’s crimes was in accordance with biblical teaching not to inflict the punishment for the son’s sins upon the mother.

As a response to Wiesenthal’s question, Hertzberg presents his own family situation. Born in Galicia in 1921 and having emigrated to the United States shortly before the Nazis came into power, he is aware of the experiences and accounts of family and friends who lived through it. He states that he “can only leave to their own guilt” (168) those who express regret at having participated in the Holocaust.