Wiesenthal's Sunflower and Forgiveness

A rather long paper for this semester's class on Personal and Political Forgiveness:

In Simon Wiesenthal’s reflective work The Sunflower, troubling questions about the morality of forgiveness are raised. While reading Wiesenthal’s own account of his encounter with repentance, and the various responses of sundry public figures it garnered, one is faced with issues such as the “appropriateness” of forgiveness, repentance’s nature to forgiveness and communal or “group” forgiveness. I will undertake to outline the opinions of familiar philosophers and authors on these issues, my responses to them, along with a brief study of Wiesenthal’s and his responders’ understandings of the issue, and my own response to Wiesenthal’s dilemma. This essay is not meant to debate or create a definition of “forgiveness,” as there is not enough space to do so and give fair time to the issues at hand. Therefore, the reader will have to understand “forgiveness,” as the term is used in this essay, in an unfortunately vague and only operative sense common, I assume, to most modern Americans. The reader shall find arguments suggesting that forgiveness is a positive end that should be seen as an eventual goal in all situations of wrongdoing, that repentance of a wrongdoer itself (or the lack thereof) should not influence the decision of a victim to forgive, and that one should have great hesitation to endorse ideas of group guilt and forgiveness.

In response to questions about the general appropriateness of forgiveness, philosopher Jeffrie G. Murphy provides moderately skeptical answers in his work Getting Even: Forgiveness and Its Limits. Murphy is a man who, I believe, would be greatly hesitant to repudiate Wiesenthal for his refusal to verbally forgive the repentant Nazi. Murphy summarizes his thesis in his preface: “We all know the cliché that ‘to err is human; to forgive, divine,’ but I think we also need to recall S.J. Perelman’s variation on this cliché: ‘To err is human; to forgive, supine.’ The message of this book is that the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes,” (Murphy, ix). In a chapter of Getting Even devoted to repentance, Murphy actually cites The Sunflower and one of its respondents, Cynthia Ozick, who says of the Nazi, “Let him go to hell.” After leaving the hospital without giving the Nazi his own form of potential absolution, Wiesenthal experiences significant pangs of doubt about his decision. This doubt, apparently, was so great that it compelled him to seek the advice of respected thinkers some two decades after the fact, and continually since then. It is telling that in such a situation, where a man having committed horrible atrocities is not explicitly forgiven by a man who is associated by heritage with the victims, still causes moral anxiety years later.

Murphy does to some extent value and even promotes forgiveness, but he does not at all believe it to be a universal mandate for victims. “Even at my most sympathetic attachment to forgiveness, however, I have tried to retain a sense of the legitimacy of resentment and other vindictive passions,” (Murphy, 115). This rather self-contradictory viewpoint provides Murphy with troublesome paradoxes throughout his work, and reflects its nature as a whole by providing his readers with a muddled answer, at best. Trudy Govier, in Forgiveness and Reconciliation, is a secular philosopher, unlike the Anglican Murphy, whose Christian faith’s emphasis on forgiving he finds difficult to reconcile with his tendency to legitimize vengeance. It is Govier, the secular writer, who holds a much clearer position on the issue, one that is overwhelmingly in favor of forgiveness, and set against Murphy’s defenses of retribution, referencing and refuting them often.

Govier makes it clear that forgiveness has positive effects for not only the offender, but also the forgiver. Referring to a hypothetical victim of wrongdoing, Govier states “although what she has suffered will always be part of her, she need not base her identity on the fact that she was wronged. In the process of forgiveness the victim comes to be more than a victim, and the offender is freed to become more than an offender,” (Govier, 48). This potential for human growth seems to be lost on Murphy and those responders to Wiesenthal who insist upon and appear moderately obsessed with the carrying out of justice; to use a cliché, “living in the past.” For Govier, forgiveness recognizes the wrongs of the past while providing for a brighter future: “Thus, what forgiveness requires is not forgetting. Rather, it is the firm locution of a wrong in the past, and the avoidance of partisan, grievance-oriented remembering,” (Govier 61). Without becoming ignorant to or condoning the committed wrong, this opinion actually focuses on the people involved, refusing to deny humanity for the sake of justice. It is this forward-looking nature, intent upon the growth of the individual, that places such a philosophy of forgiveness morally above the tepid approval of Murphy and outright embraces of vengeance found in some of The Sunflower’s essays.

This forgiveness, a personal, emotional and intellectual decision by an individual, does not by any means deny the right of punitive measures or abrogates justice. Govier never claims that by forgiving one gives up the right to redress the wrongs committed. But it should, perhaps, give pause to those who claim to “forgive” and seek extraordinarily harsh punishments. While Murphy and others claim that forgiveness may not give suitable dignity to the victim, such is a third-party viewpoint that does not actually consider the victim, but the appearance of his or her actions. For if one truly forgives, it is then that they have validated themselves and their inherent worth that was attacked by the wrongdoer in their uniquely human action of forgiving.

Wiesenthal seems to believe that the Nazi who asked his forgiveness was sincerely repentant, and was sorry for his crimes. Even so, he was not swayed to forgive the dying SS man. All of the authors cited so far recognize and understand as important the notion of repentance. Murphy claims that the interior mental act of repentance “may be seen simply as the remorseful acceptance of responsibility for the evil that one sees in one’s character, the repudiation of that evil, and the sincere resolve to do one’s best to extirpate it,” (Murphy, 41). I find this to be a suitable operative definition to keep in mind. Murphy also believes that “sincere… repentance might reasonably be made a condition of forgiveness,” (Murphy 39). This belief is certainly not shared by all of the thinkers whom with we are familiar.

Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the former head of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, passionately defends forgiveness, and specifically political “group” forgiveness, in his book enlighteningly titled No Future Without Forgiveness. The operation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission involved the granting of political amnesty to any person who came before the Commission and confessed to their crimes under apartheid. This system was widely criticized, not infrequently because no repentance need be shown or admitted to by those confessing to the crimes. Tutu, although initially wary, defends this system as the most fair: “For if the applicant was effusive in his protestations in being sorry… he would have been condemned for being totally insincere… If, on the other hand, he was somewhat abrupt and merely formal, he would have been accused of being… not really repentant,” (Tutu, 50). As far as political forgiveness is concerned, Tutu believes that it is simply not practical or wise to demand repentance for amnesty. However, even were an applicant to successfully gain amnesty, he is by no means guaranteed to actually be “forgiven” by his immediate victims or the rest of the population he oppressed. Repentance only marginally concerns Tutu, and never as a prerequisite for forgiveness.

Govier shares Tutu’s opinion that repentance should not have to precede forgiveness. She too recognizes the dangers and impracticality of waiting for remorse from the offender, and approvingly quotes Margaret Holmgren: “’[T]he appropriateness of forgiveness has nothing to do with the actions, attitudes, or position of the wrongdoer. Instead it depends on the internal preparations of the person who forgives,’” (Govier, 62). It is obvious that in several cases, requiring repentance before forgiveness is impossible; when the offender is dead, unreachable, or unable to communicate there is no way to forgive them if one requires the offender to show remorse. Yet this does not make it easier for a victim to forgive when their offender shows no remorse or, even worse, gloats and is pleased with his deed. However, I maintain, with Tutu and Govier, that it is wrong and harmful to forgive only when the offender is repentant.

Forgiving before remorse, if possible, can be beneficial for both the victim and eventually the offender. Govier explains, “no victim will benefit, psychologically or morally from clinging to a resentful sense of her own victimhood and dwelling in the past,” (Govier, 63), even, she believes, when the offender is unrepentant. Secondly, there is no way to know that the offender, while indifferent now, will not one day feel remorse for his actions. Were such a day to come, it might actually have been partially facilitated by the knowledge that his or her own victim had already forgiven him, and recognized his own humanity. Like the universal appropriateness of forgiveness, such an understanding is positive and future-looking for both victim and offender.

Wiesenthal’s great hesitation, I believe, in forgiving the Nazi was his doubt in his actual ability and “place” to do so, as he was not nor was he related to any of the victims of the SS man’s actions. While my own response would have differed from Wiesenthal, his hesitation is perfectly understandable and reasonable, for the Nazi’s request raised frustratingly difficult questions of group guilt and forgiveness. Wiesenthal retells his camp friend Josek’s reaction to the story: “You would have had no right to [forgive him] 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.” Wiesenthal counters: “But aren’t we a single community with the same destiny, and one must answer for the other,” (Wiesenthal, 65).

The problem is multifaceted: the Nazi had probably done no particular harm to Wiesenthal, but his identity as an SS man (an identity of choice) was reason on top of his actions to be resented. Wiesenthal, as stated before, was not one of the victims of the SS man’s cruelty. However, the SS man did indeed harm him in a far more subtle sense; his victims’ only crime was being Jewish, their punishment was for being Jewish, and Wiesenthal was, of course, Jewish. The Nazi’s crime was perpetrated only because these people were members of a certain community, the same to which Wiesenthal belonged, and their very value as human beings was denied because of it. Therefore, the Nazi had, in a way, denied Wiesenthal’s own human dignity and value, and harmed him. In this way, Wiesenthal did have something for which to forgive the dying SS man, but I do not believe that he was focused upon this. He was, very understandably, disgusted by the SS man’s actions and confused about his own ability to forgive the man for them, rather than for the indirect attack on his own dignity.

I believe that Wiesenthal should have simply told the man “I forgive you.” Whether there was enough time in that makeshift hospital room to actually come around to forgiveness I do not know, but it should have been a goal for Wiesenthal. The Nazi, after all, just wanted to hear these words from a single Jew. He understood the enormity of the task he was asking, and perhaps knew that the Jew he would beg mercy from would not have the ability to forgive him on the part of those he killed. But the fact that he recognized he needed forgiveness from a member of the Jewish community was in itself a realization of his crime as one against the entire community. The Jew, Wiesenthal, could very well have forgiven him for this denial of his dignity as a human as the result of his Jewish heritage. Such an opinion is shared by the majority of The Sunflower’s Christian responders, such as Cardinal Franz Konig, and Martin Marty.

It seems to me that Wiesenthal had this capacity to forgive the man because he was, indeed, a Jew, but that his forgiveness of the man (were it to have occurred) would not have been by any means forgiveness by the group, the Jewish community. Reading some of The Sunflower’s Jewish responders, such as Cynthia Ozick, proves this fact. Wiesenthal’s forgiveness would have been just that, his own, but it would have eased the (deservedly) tortured soul of the German. As a Catholic, I have to believe in the goodness of mercy, including such small mercies as this. And my belief in the afterlife and Judgment by God also makes the forgiveness of other humans, at the moment of death, insignificant in a cosmic sense. However, divine forgiveness is a topic for another paper.

Groups, especially large ones such as the Jewish community, or Germans, or black South Africans, are necessarily large and made up of a myriad of individuals, each with his or her own beliefs, values, and attitudes. When one speaks of group forgiveness, it is naïve to believe that all members of a wronged group will forgive an offender, or perhaps that even most of them will. When is it correct to say that a group has forgiven? Does it occur when 100% of its members pledge forgiveness? A simple majority? Perhaps two-thirds? One can speak of most or many members of a group having forgiven an offender, but not the group itself. Such topics also beg the idea of group guilt. Were all “Aryan” Germans and Afrikaners guilty of oppressing Jews and blacks? Should the group somehow apologize? Who should be the one to apologize? When Desmond Tutu accepted an apology on the behalf of his church, there was a furor. Would this not be so for the one doing the apologizing? Certainly not all Germans or Afrikaners oppressed the victims of hatred in their country, and not all probably sat by idly. For such large groups, whose membership is not by choice but by birth or nature, applying blanket guilt and blame is wrong. To do so is not only to commit injustice to those who did fight the system, though they were not oppressed, but also lets those truly guilty off easy by lumping them with their perhaps more innocent populations. Individuals can apologize; this happened, in some form and in some cases, in Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Such groups cannot.

I would like to point out some special exceptions. There exist, of course, groups in which membership consists of a choice to belong. Political parties, special interest groups, sports teams and to an extent, faiths belong in this category. For my purposes, I shall use the example of my own faith, the Roman Catholic Church. It is an undeniable fact that the Church, being both its hierarchy and lay membership, has fostered in its history recurring themes of anti-Semitism. Thankfully, the modern era and papal declarations such as Paul VI’s Nostra Aetate have freed the Church from overwhelming anti-Semitism and prejudice against Jewish “Christ-killers.” However, Pope John Paul II publicly acknowledged the Church’s historical guilt in such beliefs and apologized for them, although he himself did not hold them, nor did any truly representative proportion of the flock he led. “As bishop of Rome and successor of the Apostle Peter, I assure the Jewish people that the Catholic Church, motivated by the Gospel law of truth and love, and by no political considerations, is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place,” (John Paul II).

Is there then, such a thing as historical guilt? Did John Paul actually have anything for which to apologize? In most other cases, I would say “no,” such as modern white Americans apologizing for slavery. However, Catholic belief in the communion of saints and the Church being made up of all its members, living and those living in the afterlife, makes appropriate John Paul’s seeking of forgiveness. Though I do not deny that there may be other such examples out there, this is the only time I can think of in which apologizing for historical group guilt may be justified and helpful. It should not be expected that all members of the white community seek forgiveness when a Klansman assaults a minority, as the Klan is not representative of mainstream white culture. A group can only be guilty if a wrong was committed on its behalf and according to its beliefs, such as individual cases of Catholics oppressing Jews in the past, during periods of accepted anti-Semitism. In such a case apology ought to be sought. When a wrong is committed against a person due to their membership in a certain group, that entire group is also wronged, and its individual members have the ability (and responsibility) to forgive.

The issues broached by Simon Wiesthenthal’s The Sunflower are many, and I have attempted to provide better understandings to those which I found most compelling. Forgiveness is always appropriate and beneficial when performed truly and sincerely, and should have been so for Wiesenthal and his dying Nazi. The repentance of a wrongdoer should not be a prerequisite for forgiveness, and group forgiveness and guilt should be approached slowly and cautiously, to ensure justice for both the innocent and guilty. Such is my belief and the belief of my Church: Forgiveness offers all people betterment, as all people both offend and are offended.

Bibliography

1. Wiesthenal, Simon. The Sunflower. 1997, 1998. Shocken Books: New York.

2. Murphy, Jeffrie G. Getting Even: Forgiveness and Its Limits. 2003. Oxford University Press: New York.

3. Govier, Trudy. Forgiveness and Revenge. 2002. Routledge: New York.

4. Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. 1999. Image Doubleday: New York.

5. Pope John Paul II. “Speech at Yad Vashem.” 3/23/2000, accessed 3/13/2007. < style="">