The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

ANDRÉ STEIN
“In our world, nothing any longer obeyed the laws of normal everyday life,…The only
law that was left as a reliable basis for judgment was the law of death.…The effect on us
was a mental paralysis, and…the clear expression of the hopelessness of our lot” (p. 68).
These words of Simon Wiesenthal allow little room for controversy as to his own
action. Daily life in extremis predetermined what was or was not within his psychological
and moral means. Any a posteriori speculation as to forgiving a dying SS murderer is
ethically questionable. In the absurd culture of the death camp where every moment was
saturated with its own premature ending, all decisions were by necessity the consequence of
planned randomization of meanings. Nothing could be taken for granted on the basis of a
previous stock of knowledge. Any act, decision, compliance with an order could as easily
be life-affirming as life-threatening. Nothing made sense. The victims were evicted from
their own destiny. Often, the result was a trance Simon calls “mental paralysis” in which
one's choices were likely to lead to destruction. Since in the concentrationary universe
nothing survived intact from the previous lifeworld of the Jew, Simon's silence had to be a
choiceless choice; it should not be argued in the lap of ordinary daily reality and with the
distance of half a century.
For me Simon's story does raise important questions about Karl's role in this matter. Did