The Sunflower’s central concern is revealed to
the reader when the author recounts a particular
incident that occurs while he is on a work detail at a local hospital. He is summoned to the bedside of a dying Nazi who wants to make a confession for his participation in a crime in which two hundred Jewish men, women and children were herded into a house which was then set on fire: ‘amidst screams from within the house and fire leaping from one floor to another, rifles were readied to shoot down anyone who tried to escape’ (p.40). The soldier then recounts: ‘Behind the windows of the second floor, I saw a man with a small child in his arms. His clothes were alight. By his side stood a woman, doubtless the mother of the child. With his free hand the man covered the child’s eyes … then he jumped into the street. Seconds later the mother followed’ (p.42). The soldier shoots them. Later, in combat with the Russians and ordered by his superiors to fire, the solder finds himself unable to move: ‘In that moment I saw the burning family … they came to meet me. No, I can not shoot at them a second time’ (p.51). In his moment of hesitation, a shell explodes by the soldier’s side and the injuries he sustains will ultimately lead to his own death.
Images of the family continue to haunt him. In the soldier’s words: ‘I have longed to talk about it to a
Jew and beg forgiveness from him’ (p.54). Simon Wiesenthal listens to the confession, at times even
offering acts of kindness. But he leaves the room without any reply to the soldier. Simon Wiesenthal then begins to question himself, and his fellow prisoners, as to whether or not it was right to refuse a dying man forgiveness.
The Sunflower chronicles their conversations. Then we discover that the author is not only telling a
story of a tragic time in the history of Jews or his own life. He is also creating a context for the reader
so that the reader may respond to a question that is both personal and political. He says: ‘You who have just read this sad and tragic episode in my life, can mentally change places with me and ask yourself the crucial question, ‘What would I have done?’’ The question invites the reader to consider his/her own ethical and moral traditions. These traditions of thought which influence our actions in response to crime, justice, compassion, and individual and collective responsibility, are then made visible.
The issues raised in this consideration are, at the same time, historical (the Holocaust) and contemporary (e.g. Bosnia, Rwanda).
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