The Sunflower By Simon Wiesenthal Analysis

The Sunflower is a memoir of Simon Wiesenthal’s experience in a Polish concentration camp and his internal conflict of whether he did the right thing by remaining silent when a dying SS man asked him for forgiveness. Wiesenthal wrestles with this choice and at the end of his memoir, he extends the question “What would you do?” to the readers. Drawing my own opinion from a number of people including “theologians, writers, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, political leaders, and victims of attempted genocide in Bosnia, Cambodia, China, and Tibet” whom have responded to this question. I personally would have been just as conflicted as Wiesenthal was, but ultimately I would have chosen to forgive him.

The characterization of Moshie and Mrs. Shachter shows the indifference and denial of the Jews of Sighet. The chilling juxtaposition of a beautiful landscape containing a camp of death illustrates how the world not only was indifferent to the inhumane suffering, but also continued to shine brightly as if nothing really mattered. This timeless theme of denial and its consequences during the Holocaust echoes the struggles of those in our time who are persecuted solely due to their beliefs. The reader takes away the important lesson of never turning away from those who need it greatest, each time one reads Elie Wiesel’s memoir,

We are humans and a majority of us have dealt with heartache, pain, broken promises, along with the joyous things like dreams, aspirations, and successful futures. Humans mess up and make mistakes, but we have to remember that forgiveness is a very prestigious and powerful thing. Forgiveness affects people’s lives in positive ways through the hardships, difficulties, and struggles of life. There comes a time when forgiveness should not be available to some individuals. However, this depends on the past situations that have occurred in your life as well as other individuals. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls, was a girl who did not live the ordinary lifestyle. She had to overcome many occurrences with her family, from living a rough life

It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.

In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.

Within the historical nonfiction memoir, Night, by Ellie Wiesel, he shows his experience and suffering during the Holocaust and how the world’s humanity is impacted. The world’s humanity begins to rethink about their kindness and questioning the existence of God in humanity. The Holocaust will never be forgotten because of the deaths of the innocent and loving human beings from the injustice of humanity. “Here or elsewhere – what difference did it make? To die today or tomorrow, or later? The night was long and never ending.”

Wiesel’s speech shows how he worked to keep the memory of those people alive because he knows that people will continue to be guilty, to be accomplices if they forget. Furthermore, Wiesel knows that keeping the memory of those poor, innocent will avoid the repetition of the atrocity done in the future. The stories and experiences of Wiesel allowed for people to see the true horrors of what occurs when people who keep silence become “accomplices” of those who inflict pain towards humans. To conclude, Wiesel chose to use parallelism in his speech to emphasize the fault people had for keeping silence and allowing the torture of innocent

In his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel strives to inform his audience of the unbelievable atrocities of the Holocaust in order to prevent them from ever again responding to inhumanity and injustice with silence and neutrality. The structure or organization of Wiesel’s speech, his skillful use of the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos, combined with powerful rhetorical devices leads his audience to understand that they must never choose silence when they witness injustice. To do so supports the oppressors.

In 1950 the Mozes twins received visas for Israel and went there. They became members of a communal settlement called a Kibbutz, populated mostly by orphans. In 1952, they both joined the Israeli Army. Miriam became a nurse and Eva studied drafting. In 1960, Eva married and came to the United States. They settled in Terre Haute, Indiana (Eva & Miriam Mozes Kor.” The Holocaust, through Their Eyes). In Eva 's book, Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz, she explains the basic need of affection she and her sister had after liberation. She also expresses the great passion and love for the land of Israel and the security it provided for Holocaust survivors (Mozes 105). As adults, Eva and Miriam suffered serious health problems. Eva suffered from miscarriages and tuberculosis. Miriam 's kidneys never fully developed and she died in 1993 of a rare form of cancer, most likely brought on by the unknown medical experiments and injections performed by Josef Mengele. Eva Mozes wrote books on her experiences and she spoke to over 400 schools, universities, conferences, and civic groups. She is the founder of CANDLES, the Holocaust Museum and Education center in Indiana. Eva later in life decides that forgiveness is good and that resolving to love one another and fight prejudice is the most significant thing one can do in life ("Eva and Miriam Mozes." Eva and Miriam Mozes).

In the world today, there are good kind hearted people, and there are also individuals who have immoral ulterior motives. But, to truly gain an insightful view of the person is to regard their actions under extreme conditions and pressure. While Elie Wiesel suffers during the Holocaust in his memoir Night, he witnesses the actions—whether good or bad, of the people he meets, and their motives that were never forgotten, as displayed in the novel. Since the Holocaust was an extreme event that caused pressure to make the right decisions, and suffer by the hands of the Nazis, or to act with neglect to the victims and be ridden with guilt, it can be said many Holocaust victims suffered, and some of the bystanders noticed and took action. One such

Simon first notices the sunflowers scattered across a military cemetery when he is on his way to his work duty. “each grave there was planted a sunflower, as straight as a soldier on a parade.” Simon sees the sunflowers on the graves as a connection “to the living world...” a place for “...butterflies to visit his grave.” Simon begins to feel envious of the dead soldiers, he writes “For me there would be no sunflower. I would be buried in a mass grave, where corpses would be piled on top of me. No sunflower would ever bring light into my darkness, and no butterflies would dance above my dreadful tomb.” Simon also encounters the sunflower when he is talking to the dying SS man when she notices a sunflower in the window “already making its appearance...It would accompany him to his cemetary, stand on his grave, and sustain his connection with life.” when Simon, the victim, would have nothing. The sunflower represented, even in death, the injustice between Germans and

Religious wars fought over beliefs were always fought between two sides and one is thought to have a winner and a loser victor and victim. In Elie Wiesel’s Noble speech “Hope, Despair, and Memory” he describes his experiences during a religious war that were more of an overpowering of people than a war no clash of metal, no hard fought fight, just the rounding up and killing of people with different beliefs that barely put up a fight. Elie Wiesel the author of the Noble lecture “Hope, Despair, and Memory” implores us to respond to the human suffering and injustice that happened in the concentration camps by remembering the past, so that the past cannot taint the future through his point of view, cultural experiences, as well as his use of rhetorical appeals.

The book The Sunflower, written by, Simon Wiesenthal is about a young jew named Simon, who was an inmate at a concentration camp. One day himself and other inmates were sent out to another job at a hospital for wounded German soldiers. While there a nurse had approached Simon and had taken him into a room where. Karl. a dying SS soldier was. He had asked to speak to a Jew as his last dying wish. Simon did not know why he was there but he could not find himself being able to leave.

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

I feel that forgiveness is not for the other person, it’s a process that provides you the energy and the self-confidence to move on.