Simon Wiesenthal Forgiveness

After being asked for forgiveness by a dying SS soldier, Simon Wiesenthal poses the final question of the novel, “what would you have done?” to his readers. It rings in the ears of the global audience as they try to imagine how they may have acted in Simon’s impossible position.
I’d have done exactly as Simon did. Leave without a response. Karl, the SS soldier on his deathbed who begged forgiveness of Simon, requested forgiveness from ANY Jewish person. This small choice could be proof that though Karl claims to feel remorse for his crimes, he still saw Jewish people through the lens of the Nazi party. He committed horrific acts, but Simon was not the victim of HIS crimes. Karl likely saw Simon less as one member of a persecuted minority,

Never. To have truly seen his guilt would have been to know himself as utterly dispossessed of all chances for forgiveness.” (pg 151.) By asking to be forgiven for what he did that day in the burning building full of Jewish civilians is enough proof that he did not fully comprehend the nature of his actions. The closest Karl could have gotten in his short life to atonement would have been to die silently with the guilt and images of his victims in his mind without inflicting those memories on anyone

Karl did not deserve closure by any stretch of the imagination. By dying without that closure when Simon leaves the room silently, Karl had the opportunity to bask in the only punishment for his crimes that he would ever experience. Simon gave him that. In Simon’s place, I would have done exactly as he did. Karl’s confession did not truly warrant a response at all. By requesting that the nurse “bring him a Jew, any Jew will do” he forfeited his right to a response from Simon as it proved immediately that he cared more about dying in peace than repenting and facing his guilt. Perhaps forgiveness, at this point in history and in the aftermath of World War II, is not the issue at hand anymore. Maybe now that the vast majority of the people who committed and experienced these events firsthand have died, the issue at hand has become whether or not descendants of the victims are given a fair chance to live without anger that boils and gradually becomes thick like blood, and if descendants of the perpetrators will continue to hear the echo of evil that once indoctrinated their communities so wholly that humanity in the face of instability was