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Theme Of The Symposium By Simon Wiesenthal Analysis

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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 …show more content…

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. …show more content…

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

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Who are we to say that someone is truly forgiven for their sins? It is not our right. I do, however, believe that we should remain compassionate and kind to everyone, even the sinful. My response is that Simon Wiesenthal did the right thing by keeping his silence when the Nazi soldier asked for forgiveness. Simon could not have forgiven the Nazi for crimes and brutalities he did to other Jews.

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Others, however, may choose to tuck their morals and principles into the darkest, smallest corner of their mind in order to appease their own wants of the world. Karl, it seems, has chosen the latter. He describes in great detail his seemingly picturesque childhood. In particular, he depicts his years spent in the Catholic Church as a server and favorite of the priest, who encouraged the boy to study religion and become a priest himself (Wiesenthal 31). This never happened.

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Not only does it take courage to confess to wrongdoings, it also takes courage to forgive. The SS soldier, Karl, is not forced to confess to a Jew, he takes it upon himself to try to make things right. The genuineness is palpable as Karl grapples for Wiesenthal's hand in the dark to prevent him from leaving. To Karl, Wiesenthal's forgiveness is the difference between dying peacefully and dying in distress.

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The responsibility of deciding whether Karl’s apology was sincere, or if the actions he committed would be pardonable by Wiesenthal, or anyone for that matter, was now Simon’s decision. This moment in time was one which had an impact around the world. The question aroused by the events of “the Sunflower,” led to thousands placing themselves in Simon’s shoes, and deciding whether to forgive or resent the dying Nazi. For myself, the answer to this question was difficult; to pardon one who had a hand in the massacre of a religious group, in this case my own , or forgive a man who seems to have ridden himself with guilt, and now awaits demise. If I were Simon, I would have replied to Karl, “ God is forgiving; he will know if you are truly apologetic, and he will decide whether to forgive you.”

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When Simon Wiesenthal walked away from the dying SS officer who asked him, a Jew, for forgiveness, Wiesenthal questioned whether it was the right thing to do. He asked others this question, and some said that it was justified and that they might even take it to the next level and scold Karl, the SS officer, while others said that Wiesenthal should have forgiven him because it was part of their religion to forgive. Edward H. Flannery said that Wiesenthal should’ve forgiven Karl because he wasn’t asking Wiesenthal to forgive him on behalf of all Jews, but just personally. I disagree with Flannery because I believe that someone can still be angry with another person and their actions even if they were not a victim of that other person’s actions, and that there are some actions that are so horrible, like the war crimes committed by Nazis, that cannot be forgiven.

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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. Wiesel’s speech is tightly organized and moves the ideas forward effectively. Wiesel begins with humility, stating that he does not have the right to speak for the dead, introducing the framework of his words.

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After reading The Sunflower Book, Mr. Simon Wiesenthal asks his readers to help him decide, should he forgives Karl who is the SS man or not. Because Mr. Simon Wiesenthal did not forgive Karl, but just walked out of the room. From my opinion, maybe the dead Soviet Soldier man was forced to be a soldier, If Karl knows his terrible mistakes and apologized as for his last breath of being alive, Also Mr. Wiesenthal is one of the holocaust survivors, so Mr. Wiesenthal would want to live his life as normal and happy as possible without any negatively involved. I believed forgiving is not what everybody can do, but instead you have to earn it.

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