The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

Although many have hailed the sincerity of the SS man's repentance, we have no way of
verifying this. All we have is Wiesenthal's remembered account, a reproduced voice, not an
authentic one. The long monologues of the dying SS man cannot be verbatim, only
approximate. Hence the mystery of his inner feelings remains swathed in the bandages that
encase his body. Wiesenthal does not enter into a dialogue with him, which might have
revealed much; he only listens.
He does carry on dialogues with his fellow Jews, and with an apprentice priest named
Bolek. These dialogues give us an important clue to the dilemma we are facing: the
language of the exchanges does more to shape our attitude toward the SS man's request for
forgiveness than the actual crime he has committed. For example, Bolek understandably
chastises Wiesenthal for his failure to forgive: “Whom had the SS man to turn to? None of
those he had wronged were still alive.” When we call the murder of a helpless Jewish father
and child a “wrong,” we ease the crime into the realm of familiar and forgivable
transgressions and relieve ourselves of the burden of facing its utter horror.
Perhaps unwittingly, Wiesenthal fills Bolek's mouth with questionable platitudes: “When
one is face to face with death one doesn't lie”; “he had no opportunity to expiate the sins
which he had committed”; he showed “genuine, sincere repentance for his misdeeds.” I
believe that anyone capable of labeling the murder of defenseless Jews a “misdeed”
sacrifices his right to comment on the subject. Trapped by his theological word-horde, the
novice weaves around the by now unmentioned details of the crime a verbal tapestry of
exculpation that shifts the onus of responsibility from the criminal to the victim. Of course,
Wiesenthal and not Bolek records these words for the reader, and this raises a question of
narrative authority in the text of The Sunflower that would require separate investigation.