Simon Wiesenthal The Sunflower

When asking anyone what the Holocaust is, there is a very standard answer as to what it was. It is infamously known as the mass killings and imprisonment of Jewish people throughout most of Western Europe. What people fail to acknowledge is that there is more to the Holocaust than this “standard answer.” There have been multiple accounts of what it was like to be in the Holocaust such as the famous books The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Night by Elie Wiesel. The memoir A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Thomas Buergenthal serves the same purpose as any text about this atrocity has served: to inform the public about what truly went on in the concentration camps and beyond. However, A Lucky Child provides a different perspective on the Holocaust. As the title indicates, it is a book about how Buergenthal was able to outlast the most infamous concentration camp: Auschwitz. It is an inspiring story and puts the reader into perspective about all the children who had been killed during the Holocaust, yet he had survived.

Night by Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust memoir about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945. Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania on September 30th, 1928. On December 10, 1986, in the Oslo City Hall, Norway, Elie Wiesel delivered The Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech. Elie Wiesel is a messenger to a variety of mankind survivors from The Holocaust talked about their experiences in the camps and their struggle with faith through the

In a span of 10 years, the Holocaust killed over 7 million people, that’s just as much as the population of Hong Kong. In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel shares his experience on how he survived the Holocaust and what he went through. How he dealt with the horrors and even to how he felt of his dad’s death and how he saw himself after it was all over. As he tried to publish it he was constantly turned down due to the fact of how horrid and truful it was. He still tried and tried until it was finally published. This book shows how the Holocaust should be taught and not be forgotten, due to it being a prime example of human impureness. Humans learn off trial and error, how the Jewish population was affected, decrease in moral, and the unsettled tension are prime examples of such mistakes.

There are many definitions of forgiveness. The dictionary defines forgiveness as “The disposition or willingness to forgive.” I agree with that, but I believe that forgiveness also lies in the hands of the victim and varies based on the crime. The book The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal is about a Jew in a concentration camp in the height of World War II in Germany. One day when he is working in a hospital, Simon is asked to forgive a dying Nazi soldier, Karl. He is faced with a dilemma that everyone has to encounter at some point in their life, but this is different than forgiving a family member for lying to you. Simon has to decide right then whether or not to forgive a murderer of many innocent Jews. Simon Wiesenthal wrote this book because he wanted to reach out and find closure for his actions. He also wanted to tell the reader about his life as a Jew in a concentration camp and the horrors he faced. He wanted us to think about what we would have done in his place and what forgiveness means to us. After he published his book, he asked certain people to respond to the story and what they would have done in his place. Some people are Jews, some are Christians, some are young, some older, some were even part of the war. Everyone who wrote an essay was different from the rest in some way, but they all had one connection, Simon. If I were in Simon’s place, I would not have granted Karl forgiveness.

In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when the ss officers were transporting all the prisoners from buna to another camp and whenever somebody couldn’t keep running the ss officers shoot them. “They had orders to shoot anyone who couldn’t sustain the peace”(Wiesel 85). The ss officers cruelty to the prisoners led them to give up, they stopped trying. If someone stopped and the officers didn’t noticed, he would probably die under the feet of all the people behind them. As the author describes his experiences, many other examples of inhumanity are revealed. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Elie Wiesel are loss of faith and disbelief.

Elie Wiesel’s somber speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, demonstrated the harsh reality of the numerous evils harvesting in the world. The main evil though was simply indifference, or a lack of concern. As a young Jewish boy, he faced the wickedness of the Holocaust, imprisoned at Buchenwald and Auschwitz and also losing both his parents and younger sister. The speaker saw atrocious horrors and suffered for a prolonged amount of time. Why was this permitted? Wiesel pinpoints the indifference of humans as the real enemy, causing further suffering and lost to those already in peril.

Survival doesn’t always come easy, most of the time you will have to make decisions that will make others judge you, whether you like it or not. For example, if someone left their friend to save themselves, should these people be held accountable for their actions? People shouldn’t be held accountable for those actions because when it comes to life or death that’s so much pressure to that person so of course they’re going to make mistakes and everyone makes mistakes we just have to learn from them. However, people will argue that if they put themselves in that situation they should be held accountable for their action

Events that occur randomly and that are traumatic can take a toll on all aspects of an individual that endure them, what if an individual were in a gruesome situation and the lives of human beings were lost under their unintentional control? How would they feel for the rest of their lifetime? In the article “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” by Nancy Sherman, she describes the emotional reality of soldiers in their home are often at odds with the civilian public, and are struggling to carry the burden of feeling responsible of traumatic situations. Survivor’s guilt is the bold feeling that survivors have after a tragic event taking place when others have passed away. Soldiers in battle experience losses during combat. They will have a subjective

Has your life ever been consumed by not forgiving someone? For this essay I will be using both, “Thanks for Not Killing My Son,” by Rita Schindler, and, “Forgiveness”, by June Callwood to explain why it’s important to forgive someone who had done wrong. Both of these writings involve an underlying message about forgiveness. Each one of them has their own stories about forgiving someone who has done wrong. Everyone at some point has been hurt by someone either mildly or severely and can possibly relate to the message both of these writings are sending. Forgiveness is all about finding closure, making peace, and helping oneself.

When Simon first walked into the room he was confused on why he was there. That was when he heard Karl begin to talk, asking him to get closer than talking about wanting to confess to a Jew so he would to be able to “die in peace”(Wiesenthal 27). When Karl began

In Sam Wiesenthal’s novel, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, the author puts readers into a scene of what he had experienced when he was forced into a concentration camp during the Holocaust. In this novel, Wiesenthal experiences many horrifying things in the concentration camp, especially death. In this particular scene of the novel, Wiesenthal encounters a dying Nazi soldier who asks for his forgiveness. As the dying soldier is speaking to Wiesenthal, he mutters, “ ‘I shall die, there is nobody to help me and nobody to mourn my death’ “ (Wiesenthal 27). Wiesenthal had to face a dilemma when this wounded soldier was asking him for help. He wasn’t sure what to do. The Nazi soldier starts pouring out all the horrible

What makes one person want to harm another? One reason a person may want to harm another is to get revenge. In the book The Year We Disappeared by Cylin and John Busby, John wants desperately to get revenge on the person who shot him in the face while he was out on a night patrol. John finds himself desiring to inflict harm on John Meyer, the person he assumes shot him, yet he does not know if this is the right thing and considers forgiveness as an option. Since the start of mankind, humans have had to contemplate these three ideas when deciding between forgiveness and revenge: the reasons people forgive, the reasons people commit revenge, and how their choice will impact others.

Author Elie Wiesel in his moving speech “Perils of Indifference” argues that mass genocide is often overlooked by those who remain indifferent. Fifty four years later, Wiesel recalls memories of his time spent in the concentration camps of Buchenwald; along with nine million others who were brutally tortured and murdered. The haunting question remains in the back of his mind-- Why didn’t anyone attempt to stop it? Now, Wiesel directs this Question towards America and anyone else who looked the other way during those harsh times. Wiesel states “Those non- Jews, those Christians, that we called the ‘Righteous Gentiles,’ whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith. Why were they so few? Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war?” Unfortunately, Wiesel’s speech remains relevant to this day. Mass genocides are still happening around the world and the people remain indifferent to their problems. One

“Bit your lips, little brother... Don’t cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. They day will come but not now… Wait. Clench your teeth and wait’ (53). These words were said by another inmate working in slave labor to Elie Wiesel. In his memoir Night Wiesel discloses his account on the experience of Auschwitz and the Buchenwald concentration camps. Throughout the book, prisoners have to endure is this is from dehumanization separation from loved ones in famine the Holocaust and for their develop the meaning of survival for many victims like Ellie why so however with such tried to be positive lessons can we learn to educate to advocate for human rights.

Not only does it take courage to confess to wrongdoings, it also takes courage to forgive. The SS soldier, Karl, is not forced to confess to a Jew, he takes it upon himself to try to make things right. The genuineness is palpable as Karl grapples for Wiesenthal's hand in the dark to prevent him from leaving. To Karl, Wiesenthal's forgiveness is the difference between dying peacefully and dying in distress. Arguably, Karl could be seen as selfish for forcing his confession on a stranger and asking for forgiveness for his monstrous deeds, but I view it as a sinner asking for mercy. I feel like mercy should be granted to Karl because he is extremely contrite. It is also more work for