The Sunflower : On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness

The two halves of this book present the reader first with an experience from Wiesenthal's life while a prisoner in a concentration camp and another experience with the mother of the SS officer who, upon his deathbed, had asked for forgiveness from Wiesenthal in the name of the Jewish family he murdered. The author, who later in his life became the renowned "Nazi hunter," goes on to ask, "Did I do the right thing in leaving without offering a word of forgiveness? And should I have told the mother the true story of her son, the SS officer?" The second part of the book consists of essays on those questions by authorities from various walks of life, some of whom have experienced genocide in their own countries. Of these essays, it is Cynthia Ozick's vituperative view and Andre Stein's dissenting opinion on the interaction with the mother that most caught my attention. But despite all the cogent arguments presented, the opinion I held immediately after reading the first part of the book is the same as the one I experience as I closed the pages after the last essay.