A review of simon wiesenthals book the sunflower

What would you do. An order was given and we marched toward the huddled mass of Jews.

I agree with Wiesenthal on this. I found the exercise of getting my own thoughts down on paper so helpful that I want to have students write their own Sunflower essay that talks about their own thoughts on forgiveness. In closing I cannot recommend this book enough.

Karl joined the Hitler Youth and later volunteered for the SS. He often wonders why him, why an SS soldier, and most of all why does it effect him so deeply.

The author has pondered his own response--silence--for more than five decades, and he asks his readers what they might have done in his place.

As they worked, a nurse came up to Simon and asked, "Are you a Jew. As hard is it might be, I should find it in my heart to forgive those who have hurt me, whether they ask for forgiveness or not. Primarily, he only apologized for that one horrific act.

I was so inspired by it, I wrote my own essay. Among the new respondents, including intellectuals, writers, theologians, political dissidents and religious leaders from around the world, are the Dalai Lama, Robert Coles, Harold S.

He feels since the soldier showed he was truly sorry, that Wiesenthal had failed to issue the Nazi, who at this point is dead, comfort at his death bed. In the last hours of my life you are with me. There may be a time when Speer has atoned enough that he will ask for forgiveness, but that time is not now.

Was my silence at the bedside of the dying Nazi right or wrong. One day, he and his work detail were sent to clean medical waste at a converted army hospital for wounded German soldiers. Otherwise I cannot die in peace. However, I do not believe that Karl deserved forgiveness.

So I lie here waiting for death. After Seidl finishes his story, he asks Wiesenthal to forgive him. Even in death they are adorn with beauty, compared to millions of dead from the concentration camps who were thrown into mass graves. Also, he actively participated in the act.

I know that what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace. He had an active conscience. I disagree wholeheartedly with that. I know that what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.

I am resigned to dying soon, but before that I want to talk about an experience which is torturing me. The letters sometimes get redundant or overly utopian, but this book is extremely provocative.

And then a shell exploded by my side. List of responses[ edit ]. No sunflower would ever bring light into my darkness, and no butterflies would dance above my dreadful tomb.

Wiesenthal feels burdened by his occurrence with the dying Nazi. Karl's head was completely covered in bandages, with openings only for his mouth, nose and ears. One day, in the middle of a fight, Karl climbed out of his trench and he recalled, "in that moment I saw the burning family, the father with the child and behind them the mother - and they came to meet me.

Forgiveness isn't something you should ask for lightly, or demand out of a person on your deathbed. There may be a time when Speer has atoned enough that he will ask for forgiveness, but that time is not now. And as long as there are people who live with hatred and prejudices, we let the sunflowers thrive.

He listened to the entire story, and when Karl asked for his forgiveness at the end, Simon got up and walked out. He dreams about it and dreads returning to the Hospital, fearing that the dying man will send for him again.

In Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, he recounts his incidence of meeting a dying Nazi soldier who tells Simon that he was responsible for the death of his family. Upon telling Simon the details, Karl asks for his forgiveness for what he helped accomplish. The Sunflower is a book on the Holocaust by Simon Wiesenthal, in which he reminisces his experience with a terminally wounded Nazi.

The book recounts Wiesenthal's experience in the Lemberg concentration camp and discusses the moral ethics of the matter. The title comes from Wiesenthal's observation of a German military cemetery. Editor’s note:We approached Ruth Pluznick to write a review of Simon Weisenthal’s book, ‘The Sunflower: On the possibilities and limits of forgiveness’ because we believe its subject matter directly relates to the issue of responding to trauma.

Responses to trauma do not only involve questions of healing, but also questions of justice. In this book Simon Wiesenthal takes the first pages to describe an event in his life and the surrealistic dilemma it posed.

One day while he was in a Nazi forced labor camp in Poland, his group finished some railroad labor and got put on clean-up duty in a wartime hospital instead/5.

Simon Wiesenthal was born in in Buczacz, Galicia, at that time a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was incarcerated between and in Buchenwald and Mauthausen and other concentration camps.4/5(19).

Simon Wiesenthal has 27 books on Goodreads with ratings. Simon Wiesenthal’s most popular book is The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of.

A review of simon wiesenthals book the sunflower