The Sunflower By Simon Wiesenthal Quotes

Being raised in a Roman Catholic household, I can tell you when it comes to forgiveness I was taught to do the Christian thing. As hard is it might be, I should find it in my heart to forgive those who have hurt me, whether they ask for forgiveness or not. What I had never pondered is the chance that someone might ask me forgiveness for something wrong they have done to someone else. Do I have the right to put them at ease or offer forgiveness? In the book The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal, a man who had watched countless of innocent Jews like himself be murdered because of sheer hate, shares his unique story. One that has made me think about the way I view, and use forgiveness.

One day while working as a prisoner of a Nazi Concentration Camp, Wiesenthal is fetched by a nurse who brings him to a dying Nazi Soldier. The soldier proceeds to tell
He often wonders why him, why an SS soldier, and most of all why does it effect him so deeply? He dreams about it and dreads returning to the Hospital, fearing that the dying man will send for him again. The meeting with the soldier haunts Wiesenthal and he constantly reminisces on whether or not he had made the right choice to walk out on the man without saying a
There is the silence of bystanders watching the persecution of the Jews of the Holocaust, and secondly, his silence he holds from the soldier's mother, never revealing how he had met her son. Both are completely different types of silence. The bystander's silence is more like a cowardice or ignorant silence, while his own silence is uncertain, yet in some way respectful. Wiesenthal suggests that sometimes it is necessary to not be silent when it involves right and wrong, and then sometimes it is necessary to be silent when there is really nothing needed to be