The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal
CONTENTS
Preface
∼ BOOK ONE ∼
The Sunflower
∼ BOOK TWO ∼
The Symposium
Sven Alkalaj
Jean Améry
Smail Balić
Moshe Bejski
Alan L. Berger
Robert McAfee Brown
Harry James Cargas
Robert Coles
The Dalai Lama
Eugene J. Fisher
Edward H. Flannery
Eva Fleischner
Matthew Fox
Rebecca Goldstein
Mary Gordon
Mark Goulden
Hans Habe
Yossi Klein Halevi
Arthur Hertzberg
Theodore M. Hesburgh
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Susannah Heschel
José Hobday
Christopher Hollis
Rodger Kamenetz
Cardinal Franz König
Harold S. Kushner
Lawrence L. Langer
Primo Levi
Deborah E. Lipstadt
Franklin H. Littell
Hubert G. Locke
Erich H. Loewy
Herbert Marcuse
Martin E. Marty
Cynthia Ozick
John T. Pawlikowski
Dennis Prager
Dith Pran
Terence Prittie
Matthieu Ricard
Joshua Rubenstein
Sidney Shachnow
Dorothee Soelle
Albert Speer
Manès Sperber
André Stein
Nechama Tec
Joseph Telushkin
Tzvetan Todorov
Desmond Tutu
Arthur Waskow
Harry Wu
Contributors
PREFACE
When the first American edition of The Sunflower was published by Schocken Books in 1976, courses about the Holocaust had just begun to appear in the curricula of colleges, high schools, and seminaries. Because it's a book that invites discussion, The Sunflower soon became one of the most widely used books in teaching settings. Simon Wiesenthal tells a personal story of an incident that occurred in a concentration camp and asks, what would you have done in his place? Theologians, political and moral leaders, and writers responded to his question—a question that is at once religious, political, moral, and personal—each from their own perspective. As would be expected, a wide variety of opinions was expressed. Nevertheless, each and every respondent had to imagine him or herself in the place of a concentration camp prisoner, to face the enormity of the crime before them, and reflect on the implications of their decision. In this one isolated case, was forgiveness an option, and what would it mean for the victim as well as the perpetrator of these crimes?
The twentieth anniversary of its publication in this country is the occasion for a new edition of The Sunflower. This second edition presents thirty-two new responses written for this volume, ten retained from the previous edition, and one, by Edward H. Flannery, revised for this edition. Three contributions—by Jean Améry, Cardinal König, and Albert Speer—were translated from the 1981 German edition and appear here for the first time in English translation.
Why a new edition of The Sunflower? In light of the events of the last twenty years, we felt it would be interesting to hear the responses of a new generation. On the one hand, time blunts memory; on the other, our knowledge and awareness of the Holocaust has increased through education. Even those who do not have a living memory of the Holocaust have begun to assimilate what it means for a people to lose one-third of its members to genocide, together with their culture, language, and history. The uniqueness of this event has finally started to sink in to the popular consciousness. Moreover, we suspected that the major changes in the Catholic church's teachings about Jews in these years, as well as other interfaith events and developments, would produce responses that differed from the first generation of respondents. Finally, the world has not stopped seeing horrors that approach genocide—in Bosnia, Cambodia, China, and countless other troubled nations around the globe—as whole classes of people are targeted for extinction by criminal regimes. The issue posed by Simon Wiesenthal in this book is still with us, transcending its original context, and forcing itself upon a contemporary one.
Few people would deny the necessity of bringing criminal leaders and policymakers to justice. Wiesenthal's Dokumentationszentrum, which seeks out Nazi criminals, has helped to bring over 1,100 Nazis to justice since the end of the war. For his work, Wiesenthal has been honored by the governments of the United States, Holland, Italy, and Israel. Committed to the necessity of enforcing international law, Wiesenthal wrote to President Clinton in July of 1995, urging him to condemn the organizers of terror in the former Yugoslavia: “The events in Bosnia, as the media portray them for us today, with all their crimes against humanity—the ethnic cleansing, the slaughtering of civilians regardless of age, the rape of Muslim women—while they do not constitute a Holocaust, repeat many of its horrors.…I believe that the condemnation of Karadzic and Mladic—verbal, at first—and the threat to put them before a tribunal—would have an effect. The United States could, I hope, put an end to the deeds of these two men and their soldiers by publicly announcing that the crimes they committed will not remain unpunished.” The importance to the world of holding such individuals responsible for their crimes is indisputable.
But the question posed in The Sunflower is more subtle and, in some sense, more vexing. What about the rank-and-file, the faceless individuals who carry out the crimes against other people ordered by their leaders? What about the individual responsibility of ordinary people, blinded or coerced by the reigning political ideology of their day, and of the small number who may regret their actions or repudiate them in a different climate? We laud the heroic individuals who defy and undermine the immoral actions of their governments, despite the mortal dangers such resistance entails—but what of the converse?
Moreover, when the killing has stopped, how can a people make peace with another who moments before were their mortal enemies? What are the limits of forgiveness, and is repentance—religious or secular—enough? Is it possible to forgive and not forget? How can victims come to peace with their past, and hold on to their own humanity and morals in the process?
All of these issues are raised in this simple and unpretentious book of questioning, based on a single and exceptional encounter between two individuals whose paths strangely and tragically crossed.
BONNY V. FETTERMAN
October 1996
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
The revised and expanded edition of The Sunflower sparked a new round of public forums and symposia in high schools, colleges, seminaries, and educational institutions across the country. This first paperback edition of the revised and expanded Sunflower includes additional responses by Rebecca Goldstein, Mary Gordon, Susannah Heschel, José Hobday, Matthieu Ricard, Sidney Shachnow, and Desmond Tutu.
March 1998
What was it Arthur said last night? I tried hard to remember. I knew it was very important. If only I were not so tired!
I was standing on the parade ground, where the prisoners were slowly assembling. They had just had their “breakfast”—a dark, bitter brew which the camp cooks had the nerve to call coffee. The men were still swallowing the stuff as they mustered for the roll call, anxious not to be late.
I had not fetched my coffee as I did not want to force my way through the crowd. The space in front of the kitchen was a fa
As we stood around silent and gloomy waiting for the order to fall in my thoughts were not concerned with the dangers which always lurked on such occasions, but were entirely centered on last night's talk.
Yes, now I remembered!
•••
It was late at night. We lay in the dark; there were low groans, soft whispering, and an occasional ghostly creak as someone moved on his plank bed. One could hardly discern faces but could easily identify a speaker by his voice. During the day two of the men from our hut had actually been in the Ghetto. The guard officer had given them his permission. An irrational whim? Perhaps inspired by some bribe? I did not know. The likelihood was that it was a mere whim, for what did a prisoner possess to bribe an officer with?
And now the men were making their report.
Arthur huddled up close to them so as not to miss a word. They brought news from outside, war news. I listened half-asleep.
The people in the Ghetto had plenty of information and we in the camp had only a small share of their knowledge. We had to piece bits together from the scanty reports of those who worked outside during the day and overheard what the Poles and Ukrainians were talking about—facts or rumors. Sometimes even people in the street whispered a piece of news to them, from sympathy or as consolation.
Seldom was the news good, and when it was, one questioned if it was really true or merely wishful thinking. Bad news, on the other hand, we accepted unquestioningly; we were so used to it. And one piece of bad news followed another, each more alarming than the last. Today's news was worse than yesterday's, and tomorrow's would be worse still.
The stuffy atmosphere in the hut seemed to stifle thought, as week after week we slept huddled together in the same sweat-sodden clothes that we wore at work during the day. Many of us were so exhausted we did not even take off our boots. From time to time in the night a man would scream in his sleep—a nightmare perhaps, or his neighbor may have kicked him. The hut had once been a stable, and the half-open skylight did not admit enough air to provide oxygen for the hundred and fifty men who lay penned together on the tiers of bunks.
In the polyglot mass of humanity were members of varied social strata: rich and poor; highly educated and illiterate; religious men and agnostics; the kindhearted and the selfish; courageous men and the dull-witted. A common fate had made them all equal. But inevitably they splintered into small groups, close communities of men who in other circumstances would never be found together.
The group to which I belonged included my old friend Arthur and a Jew named Josek, a recent arrival. These were my closest companions. Josek was sensitive and deeply religious. His faith could be hurt by the environment of the camp and by the jeers or insinuations of others, but it could never be shaken. I, for one, could only envy him. He had an answer for everything, while we others vainly groped for explanations and fell victims to despair. His peace of mind sometimes disconcerted us; Arthur especially, whose attitude to life was ironic, was irritated by Josek's placidity and sometimes he even mocked him or was angry with him.
Jokingly I called Josek “Rabbi.” He was not of course a rabbi; he was a businessman, but religion permeated his life. He knew that he was superior to us, that we were the poorer for our lack of faith but he was ever ready to share his wealth of wisdom and piety with us and give us strength.
But what consolation was it to know that we were not the first Jews to be persecuted? And what comfort was it when Josek, rummaging among his inexhaustible treasure of anecdotes and legends, proved to us that suffering is the companion of every man from birth onward?
As soon as Josek spoke, he forgot or ignored his surroundings completely. We had the feeling that he was simply unaware of his position. On one occasion we nearly quarreled on this point.
It was a Sunday evening. We had stopped work at midday and lay in our bunks relaxing. Someone was talking about the news; it was of course sad as usual. Josek seemed not to be listening. He asked no questions as the others were doing but suddenly he sat up and his face looked radiant. Then he began to speak.
“Our scholars say that at the Creation of man four angels stood as godparents. The angels of Mercy, Truth, Peace, and Justice. For a long time they disputed as to whether God ought to create man at all. The strongest opponent was the angel of Truth. This angered God and as a punishment He sent him into banishment on earth. But the other angels begged God to pardon him and finally he listened to them and summoned the angel of Truth back to heaven. The angel brought back a clod of earth which was soaked in his tears, tears that he had shed on being banished from heaven. And from this clod of earth the Lord God created man.”
Arthur the cynic was vexed and interrupted Josek's discourse.
“Josek,” he said, “I am prepared to believe that God created a Jew out of this tear-soaked clod of earth, but do you expect me to believe He also made our camp commandant, Wilhaus, out of the same material?”
“You are forgetting Cain,” replied Josek.
“And you are forgetting where you are. Cain slew Abel in anger, but he never tortured him. Cain had a personal attachment to his brother, but we are strangers to our murderers.”
I saw at once that Josek was deeply hurt and to prevent a quarrel I joined in the conversation.
“Arthur,” I said, “you are forgetting the thousands of years of evolution; what is known as progress.”
But both of them merely laughed bitterly—in times like these such platitudes were meaningless.
Arthur's question wasn't altogether unjustified. Were we truly all made of the same stuff? If so, why were some murderers and other victims? Was there in fact any personal relationship between us, between the murderers and their victims, between our camp commandant, Wilhaus, and a tortured Jew?
And last night I was lying in my bunk half-asleep. My back hurt. I felt dizzy as I listened to the voices which seemed to come from far away. I heard something about a piece of news from the BBC in London—or from Radio Moscow.
Suddenly Arthur gripped my shoulder and shook me.
“Simon, do you hear?” he cried.
“Yes,” I murmured, “I hear.”
“I hope you are listening with your ears, for your eyes are half-closed, and you really must hear what the old woman said.”
“Which old woman?” I asked. “I thought you were talking about what you had heard from the BBC?”
“That was earlier. You must have dozed off. The old woman was saying…”
“What could she have said? Does she know when we will get out of here? Or when they are going to slaughter us?”
“Nobody knows the answers to those questions. But she said something else, something that we should perhaps think about in times like these. She thought that God was on leave.” Arthur paused for a moment in order to let the words sink in. “What do you think of that, Simon?” he asked. “God is on leave.”
“Let me sleep,” I replied. “Tell me when He gets back.”
For the first time since we had been living in the stable I heard my friends laughing, or had I merely dreamt it?
We were still waiting for the order to fall in. Apparently there was some sort of hitch. So I had time to ask Arthur how much of what I recalled was dream and how much real.
“Arthur,” I asked, “what were we talking about last night? About God? About ‘God on leave’?”
“Josek was in the Ghetto yesterday. He asked an old woman for news, but she only looked up to heaven and said seriously: ‘Oh God Almighty, come back from your leave and look at Thy earth again.’”
“So that's the news; we live in a world that God has abandoned?” I commented.
I had known Arthur for years, since the time when I was a young architect and he was both my adviser and my friend. We
I lived more in the present: savoring hunger, exhaustion, anxiety for my family, humiliations…most of all humiliations.
I once read somewhere that it is impossible to break a man's firm belief. If I ever thought that true, life in a concentration camp taught me differently. It is impossible to believe anything in a world that has ceased to regard man as man, which repeatedly “proves” that one is no longer a man. So one begins to doubt, one begins to cease to believe in a world order in which God has a definite place. One really begins to think that God is on leave. Otherwise the present state of things wouldn't be possible. God must be away. And He has no deputy.
What the old woman had said in no way shocked me, she had simply stated what I had long felt to be true.
We had been back in the camp again for a week. The guards at the Eastern Railway works had carried out a fresh “registration.” These registrations involved new dangers that were quite unimaginable in normal life. The oftener they registered us, the fewer we became. In SS language, registering was not a mere stocktaking. It meant much more: the redistribution of labor, culling the men who were no longer essential workers and throwing them out—usually into the death chamber. From bitter personal experience we mistrusted words whose natural meaning seemed harmless. The Germans’ intentions toward us had never been harmless. We were suspicious of everything and with good reason.
Until a short time ago about two hundred of us had been employed at the Eastern Railway works. Work there was far from light, but we felt free to some extent and did not need to return to the camp each night. Our food was brought from the camp, and it tasted accordingly. But as the guards were railway police we were not continually exposed to the unpredictable whims of the SS camp patrols.