The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

career when the war broke out. During the Russian occupation he worked on building sites.
All his family possessions had been nationalized by the Russians. When in the summer of
1940 the great wave of deportations to Siberia began, embracing all of “bad social origin”
(i.e., especially members of the well-to-do classes), he and his family had hidden for weeks.
At our first meeting after his arrival in the camp he had said: “You see it was worthwhile
hiding from the Russians. If they had caught me I should now be in Siberia. As it is I am still
in Lemberg. Whether this may be an advantage…”
He was completely indifferent to his surroundings. His fiancée was in the Ghetto but he
rarely had news from her. She must have been working in some army formation.
His parents, to whom he was deeply devoted, had perished in the very first days after the
German occupation. Sometimes in his disregard for his surroundings he seemed to me like a
sleepwalker. He grew more and more remote, and at first we could not rightly understand
why. But gradually we all came to resemble him. We too had lost most of our relatives.
My story had apparently roused Arthur a little from his apathy, but for a long time nothing
more was said by any of my listeners.
Then Arthur got up and went to a bunk where a friend of his was retailing the radio news.
And the others went about their own business.
Only Josek stayed with me.
“Do you know,” he began, “when you were telling us about your meeting with the SS man,
I feared at first, that you had really forgiven him. You would have had no right to do this in
the name of people who had not authorized you to do so. What people have done to you
yourself, you can, if you like, forgive and forget. That is your own affair. But it would have
been a terrible sin to burden your conscience with other people's sufferings.”