The Sunflower By Simon Wiesenthal Summary

Imagine you were substantially harmed by people or a society. You look over and see those people or the society asking for your forgiveness. What would you do? Simon Wiesenthal’s “The sunflower” is a story of Wiesenthal’s experience as a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp. A Nazi soldier, Karl, who had participated in the execution of Jewish people and who had been wounded during the close fight, is dying. Karl, reveals to Wiesenthal his movements against Jewish people and asks him for a forgiveness by telling him that he can not die in a piece without his answer; nevertheless, after hearing the confession, the prisoner leaves the room without saying a word. I agree with Wiesenthal’s decision about leaving the room without saying a word; therefore, I think that we shouldn’t forgive them because our psychology and morality don’t let us do it.
Initially, I have always believed that “Without forgetting there can be no forgiving (qtd. in Fricke 176)” because if we forgive it will be nothing but verbal forgiveness. Forgiveness

The reason of this inability is our morality. Most of the sins that a man can do on the earth are forgivable but there are some sins that simply are unforgivable. The Bible has a notion of an unforgivable sin or a sin against the Holy Spirit. The sin is against the Holy spirit if it is done deliberately and it comes from such evil heart that cannot be changed (The Bible's Viewpoint 29). So I agree with Langer when he tells us, “The mass murder of European Jewry is unforgivable crime (187)” because their hands are stained with the blood of Jewish men, women, and children. All the orders Nazi soldiers obeyed are crimes that refuse forgiveness because these orders show us how evil soldiers’ hearts were when they killed millions of innocent Jewish people; consequently, we cannot forgive them because this action will go beyond our