The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

HANS HABE
On reading The Sunflower I was greatly excited, as everybody who reads your story
must be. However, you have not asked me for literary criticism, but for my views on the
problems of forgiveness. The two unspoken questions in your story interest me specially:
Whom ought we to forgive, when ought we to forgive? I imagine that you did forgive the man
whom you call Karl S. But that is, I fear, too simple an answer. We are not an appeal court
from God. He revises our judgments, we do not revise His. God's punishment struck the SS
man, bypassing all human courts. He whom men punish can still be acquitted by God: he
whom men acquit God still may punish. But he whom God has punished we cannot acquit
nor can we increase the Divine punishment. Least of all through hatred. He who has been
punished is removed from our jurisdiction, even the words “Requiescat in pace” are a mere
suggestion. We can hope that a person may rest in peace, we cannot ensure it.
Immediately there arises the question: Ought we, can we, forgive others, murderers who
are still alive?
Here too we must be more precise. Whom do you understand by “we”? If you mean the
Jews, mothers and fathers, relatives and friends of the martyred and slaughtered people, then
there is a considerable shift of meaning. Murder is neither forgivable nor unforgivable.
Morals are not restricted to the victims. I have always doubted the role of so-called counsel
who appear on behalf of private individuals in murder cases. To judge crimes against
humanity is the affair of humanity. Victor Gollancz, the English publisher, who immediately