Type 4 Nora FCAs Summary Character Opinion Forgiveness “Is it possible to forgive and not forget? How can victims come to peace with their past, and hold on to their own humanity and morals in the process?” In The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal writes about an incident that occurs when he is imprisoned in a concentration camp. One day, when he is working in a hospital, he gets summoned to the room of a dying SS member.
From the small town of Sighet in Transylvania to the huge concentration camps of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, the author and victim of the book Night, the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Wiesel is a 15 year old Jewish boy who was captured by the Germans or “Nazis” during WWII. He went through an overwhelming amount of trauma, like when he got separated from his mother and sisters and watching his father suffer an unbearable amount of pain that eventually killed him. The fact is, power is a tool that can corrupt itself and others, it can ruin people’s lives and it can do that without people even realizing it.
In the book Night by Ellie Wiesel a young boy describes his experiences as a Jew in the concentration camps during World War II. During this time, Wiesel witnessed many horrific acts. Two of these were executions. Though the processes of the executions were similar, the condemned and the Jew’s reactions to the executions differed tremendously. The first execution he describes in his book is one of many that occurred during his time in the camp.
Howard Schultz once said, “In times of adversity and change, we discover who we are and what we are made of.” In life, one starts to realize everything is not always peachy. Sometimes one has to go through patches of thorns before things start to look up, but in the long run difficulties in life turn out to make one stronger person. In the books Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom, and Night by Elie Wiesel, two of the main characters are pushed to their limits and beyond. How these men react to their situation is both mesmerizing, and courageous.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer Wiesel narrates the legendary tale of what happened to him and his father during the Holocaust. In the introduction, Wiesel talks about how his village in Seghet was never worried about the war until it was too late. Wiesel’s village received advanced notice of the Germans, but the whole village ignored it. Throughout the entire account, Wiesel has many traits that are key to his survival in the concertation camps.
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.
He was not wrong to respond to the SS man’s wishes with silence. Wiesenthal was placed in a difficult situation in which he was not directly harmed by Karl, but he was still connected to the events that occurred and the deaths caused by the hands of the Nazi regime. There is truly no way to tell if Karl was sincerely remorseful for his endeavors. If he somehow lived, would he still be overcome by his guilt or would he return to his sadistic ways? There is no way of knowing.
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird and Eugenia Coolliers short story “Marigolds” evoke the most empathy by showing the growth of morals like empathy and compassion in the characters. The dynamic characters are used to emphasize how a person can change while symbolism is used to show a deeper meaning in an object both are used by the authors to evoke empathy. To Kill A Mockingbird, a novel published in 1960 about innocence, compassion and hatred. A story about children living in a racist time period trying to get through living there childhood without being influenced by the bad customs. “Marigolds” by Eugenia Cooliers is a short story also written in the 1960’s about a learning compassion and turning into a woman.
In the Ostbahn Repair Works, Simon tried multiple times to kill himself. Simon made his first attempt by using a small razor blade to cut both his wrist and his second attempt was to hang himself. In the aftermath of the war, Wiesenthal had no hope & was overcome by sadness, and hardly looked for his friends and family because he thought that "his people were dead”. The exposure to seeing death & the suicide attempts on his life are the mental & emotional impacts on Simon Wiesenthal due to the
Nightjohn, a novel written by Gary Paulsen, takes location throughout one of the finest periods of prejudice and racism in American records. Nightjohn is the story of a young slave lady named Sarny. Within the book, Sarny meets any other slave named Nightjohn, he teaches Sarny a way to study and write. Ultimately, after Nightjohn is punished for coaching Sarny, he runs away, however, later he returns to complete coaching Sarny. Sarny failed to accept the fact that she was a slave or the unfairness in opposition to her prevent her from learning.
Simon became his last chance to make everything back into right track and requested a peaceful death. Another instance demonstrated Karl’s repentance was that he remembered he shot the family to death when they jumping out from the window of the burning house. That image remained in his mind and tortured him mentally until his very last second of life. Just like he described in book, “The pains in my body are terrible, but worse still is my conscious, It never ceases to remind me of the burning house and the family that jumped from the window” (Wiesenthal 53). This scene engraved in his mind deeply since he felt guilty toward the family which broke him down mentally and making him unable to move, led to his injury.
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.
In the time of the Holocaust, love, laughter, and nature all helped the human spirit triumph. Love is one of the “big things” that helped people’s spirit to keep on going. Yellow Star a book based on a little girl named Syvia who is in a ghetto in Lodz imprisoned with her family. It’s the love of her family that kept her going and alive during this time in her life. She was one of the 12 children to pull through the ghetto in Lodz due to the sacrifices her family made to keep her breathing.
He knew he was dying and he wanted to confess to a crime he had committed to a Jew (Wiesenthal, 1998). Wiesenthal does not call him by his name in the book when he speaks or thinks of him; however, for the purpose of this book review his birth name will be used. He had grown up in a religious household, however, when he joined Hitler’s Youth that was the end of the significance of the church for Karl. His parents never accepted his decision, but dared not to speak against it. Karl spent much of their time
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the personal tale of his account of the inhumanity and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a young Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. Wiesel and his family are deported to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must learn to survive with his father’s help until he finds liberation from the horror of the camp. This memoir, however, hides a greater lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation.