Theme Of The Symposium By Simon Wiesenthal Analysis

The Symposium consists of 52 distinguishing characters answering the question in Wiesenthal’s place. An answer to this question is not easy for anyone to make. However, the distinction almost each one of the characters points out is that there is a difference between forgiveness and forgetting. Forgiving someone for the atrocities they caused generations of Jews or forgetting about the atrocities done to the Jew. As a consensus, forgetting was not an opinion. As a Jew, as a Holocaust survivor, as a human it was necessary to preserve history, therefore, to prevent such atrocities from happening again. Forgiveness opened a dialogue among many of the responders for two reasons. The first reason, did Wiesenthal have the authority to forgive

Could I forgive someone who helped murder 300 men, women, and children? Could I look someone in the eyes and rid them of all their sins? Looking at the text, Karl spoke to Simon Wiesenthal as if he was a priest and this was his final confession. Simon Wiesenthal listens to his confession; I question his sincerity, as did many of the responders. For Karl’s confession, he only required a Jew. “His plea for forgiveness was addressed to someone who lacked the power to grant it” as Harold S. Kushner responds in (Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 184). Karl can only receive forgiveness from the ones he committed the crime against, but because of his actions they all perished. Abraham Joshua Heschel a Jewish rabbi, one of the responders said, “No one can forgive crimes against other people. According to Jewish traditions, even God himself can only forgive sins committed against Himself, not against man” (Wiesenthal, 1998, p.

Hannah and her Heinrich Blücher husband were both escapees and survivors; she had traveled to Jerusalem to witness the Eichmann trials for the New Yorker in 1961. Two factors connect these men and their actions aside from joining the SS. The first factor, both Eichmann and Karl make no excuse their actions and both willing admit to their crimes. The second factor, both said they were following orders, “Eichmann not only followed orders, he obeyed the law” (Arendt, 1963, p. 135) and thus had nothing to do with their personal beliefs, but had a duty to fulfill. Eichmann was an established SS whose only regret in life was that he did not finish his job; Eichmann was in charge of deportation to Auschwitz (Arendt, 1963). It is unfair to compare the two men; Karl did not live long enough to see what he could have been capable of doing. In addition, if Karl had not been dying and lived, would he have continued to live out as a SS or would have revolted against the