The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

extraordinary happened, something I had never experienced, before or since. He threw
himself on the floor, knelt down, wrung his hands, and then folded them. I couldn't remain
seated in my chair, I didn't want to leave, so I knelt beside him and we prayed aloud the
Lord's prayer:…and forgive us our sins.
I had never known before what remorse was. Many years later, I learned what the word
teshuvah meant in the Jewish tradition: deliverance, changing one's ways, a new beginning.
A Jewish tradition tells that teshuvah was created even before the Creation, together with
the Torah, the name of the Messiah, and other mysteries. Supposedly, there is no person,
time, or place where teshuvah is not possible.
This is what I thought as I read Simon Wiesenthal. Wasn't teshuvah at work with this
dying young SS man? If so, then Wiesenthal didn't have to lie, later, to the mother. Both the
murderer and his mother were not alone in this one-sided conversation. God was there;
together with the mother of the youth, he had awaited the murderer.
Perhaps I would have said, No, I cannot forgive you. But perhaps the other. Oremus.