The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

these are explanations. They are not excuses. The SS man does not pretend that they are
excuses. He does not attempt to excuse himself. He was guilty of an appalling crime and he
was frankly confessing his crime. Nor has the author any doubt of the sincerity of his
repentance. Therefore, however difficult it was, there is surely no doubt that a word of
compassion, indicative of his recognition of that sincerity, should have been said.
It is of course true that penitence involves a willingness to make restitution to the person
wronged and, had the circumstances been other, it would have been reasonable to have
demanded of the SS man that, even if he could not bring back to life the little child whom he
had killed or discover any of his immediate relatives, yet he should in some notable way
have attempted some service to the Jews which would have given evidence of the sincerity
of his repentance. Whether he could or would have satisfied such a challenge had he lived
and been restored to health, who shall say? Since he was to die in a few hours, the question
is meaningless. Even if the author had doubted, one should give the benefit of the doubt.
'Tis God shall repay. I am safer so.
Nor indeed is it easy to see, as indeed the author himself confesses, for what reason the
SS man should have sent for and made this confession to a Jew unless he was sincerely
ashamed of what he had done.
Of course I am stating what seems to me to be the absolute moral law. I am not suggesting
that obedience to that law could under the circumstances possibly have been easy or passing
any personal condemnation. But surely the absolute moral law was stated by Christ at the
Crucifixion when He prayed for the forgiveness of His own murderers. It is of course true
that the persecution and murder of Jews was still going on and that the author fully expected
that he himself would be murdered before long. But that, I should have thought, in the moral