The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

elation to forgiveness of humans. Contrariwise, in the same Gospel we read Jesus’ answer
to the question of how many times one must forgive. Should it be “seven times”? Speaking
out of his Jewish tradition, his answer was, “Seventy times seven times”—a metaphorical
way of saying “always.”
Simon connives with the foregoing principle, though obliquely. When speaking of those
bystanders who passively watched Nazi atrocities, he writes, “Was it not just as wicked for
people to look on quietly and without protest at human beings enduring such shocking
humiliation?” Does not watching the dying Nazi pleading for mercy in his final agony fit
within his description of inhumanity?
The Sunflower story brings up the question of whether Simon had a right to forgive Karl
in the name of all Jews. The question appears to me as irrelevant. The dying SS man did not
ask him to speak in the name of all Jews or, for that matter, for the harm done to all Jews but
only for what he had done. The situation was interpersonal; the right to speak for all Jews is
public and juridical, which does not apply here. One could ask further: If Karl were to
extend the scope of forgiveness to collective proportions and should die in this happy
illusion, where would be the harm?
The ultimate question posed in The Sunflower asks whether the fundamental norms of
ethics and morality are exceptionable in certain difficult circumstances. Two answers are
generally given. The first, the traditional and religious one, holds to the universality and
permanence of basic moral laws and thus finds them unexceptionable. The second denies
this and in this way relativizes moral norms in order to render them subject to change and
dependent on individual and social needs and desires. Both positions derive from differing
religious, ethical, and ideological premises, which explains why in our secularized societies