The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

a grim pleasure in their shame, I felt the emptiness of revenge against the guiltless. And I
found myself actually urging them not to allow the past to distort the present, not to allow
Auschwitz to deny them a moment of well-earned self-respect.
Certainly I don't believe that Germans or Jews should obscure the memory of the past. But
since that encounter in Berlin I have become increasingly committed to German-Jewish
reconciliation. Wiesenthal's humane gesture toward Karl's mother reinforces for me the
sense that, just as we are commanded to remember all our Egypts, there are times when we
must also transcend them. For Wiesenthal the survivor, behaving graciously toward the
mother of an SS officer required moral courage; for the rest of us, treating a new generation
with decency requires only moral common sense.