Aria Bashizadeh Fakhar
Journal 1 week 2
The Sunflower
Wiesenthal’s question at the end of his narrative is quite a surprising one. By this I mean that, usually, in holocaust narratives, the author almost immediately condemns the actions of all of the SS, and does not even question forgiving the SS for their murderous actions. However, Wiesenthal did, and as he said, he wants us to “mentally change places… and ask yourself the crucial question ‘What would I have done’”, and to that, I would have to say I would have done exactly as he had done. I would have simply walked out of the room without uttering a word. I would have however, when talking to his mother, provided her with the actual details of what her son had done to the Jews, and reinforced the idea that Hitler was the one that had converted her son into a murderous person. It was only his influence that had changed him, and the influence on others that had pressured him to conform to the national socialist party ideals. It was for Hitler that Karl joined the SS and became a murderer. She needed to understand that her neighbors were just like her, and in her exact situations and that finding and removing the Jews was not the answer to their economic and life woes. I would have also confirmed the fact that her son was a good man, but kept up with the fact that Hitler was actually the cause of their problems, and was the cause of the loss of a generation’s innocence.
In the hospital itself, I could have not said a word. How could I have? He and his kind were killing my people, and were doing it with the world famous German efficiency. It reminds me of (one of) our current economic woes: the BP oil leak. To this day, I can never understand (other than purposes of greed, but I unsure if Representative Barton had received funding from the company for his campaign) why the representative from Texas actually apologized to BP for our government’s apparent shakedown of the oil company. Does he not understand that in previous natural disasters that oil companies have tried to deny any obligation to the environmental disaster that they had caused? Had I forgiven Karl right then and there, I would have dismissed any obligation from the Germans to right what they have wronged, and prolonged the misery of my people.