The Sunflower Assignment # 2

"'But aren't we a single community with the same destiny, and one must answer for the other,' I interrupted."

In The Sunflower, one of the main arguments against answering the SS man's plea for forgiveness, was that the SS man could not ask forgiveness for his crimes from someone on whom his crimes had no effect. Simon, the Jew brought to Karl, had suffered at the hands of other Nazi soldiers and antisemitic Poles, but was never harmed by this particular man. But Karl viewed the Jewish community as one single, unified entity (as Simon did, above), and, confined to his deathbed, considered any Jew to be interchangeable with any other Jew. He was out of time, and had no access to the people he had hurt and killed -- most of them were probably deceased. It could be said that, had Simon complied with Karl's last request, it would have been more of a "symbolic" granting of forgiveness; that Simon would have only been speaking on behalf of his people and Karl's request was within reason. But, others would argue that this cannot be. Simon was not chosen by his people to speak for them. He had no right to substitute their words with his own, no right to speak for them posthumously because those people whom Karl gunned down in a burning house, did not give him that right. Karl never had the chance to receive the forgiveness of his victims: that opportunity died with them.