The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

increments in his humanity add up, in the final reckoning, to very much at all when weighed
against the horror in which he participated both in creed and deed—the one deed for which
he requests of you the thing he calls “forgiveness,” as well as the countless others involving
his failure to see?
Yes, the SS man came to see, to some extent, his guilt, but not, I think, to the full extent in
which that guilt exists and always will. For had he understood the enormity of his crimes, he
would never have dared to ask for forgiveness. Never. To have truly seen his guilt would
have been to know himself as utterly dispossessed of all chances for forgiveness. It would
have been to know himself as having forfeited forever any questionable right to “die in
peace.” Perhaps then, and only then, in knowing his absolute unforgivability, would it even
be conceivable that he be granted forgiveness—and then only by those three burning souls,
multiplied by millions.