Journal 5

Allison Rood
Topics In Literature
6/27/2010

The dying Nazi soldier wanted to tell his story to the narrator, Simon Wiesenthal, almost as a last act of repentance before his final breath. He wanted to be able to live out the rest of his days without imagining the sights of men, women, and their children jumping out of a burning building, the building he helped set ablaze. He didn’t want to feel the pain and remorse day after day when all he was trying to do was live through the pain, hoping the doctor would put him to sleep.

Since the people that he had hurt were no longer alive to accept his forgiveness, he asked the first Jew he could find to do him the honor. But in my opinion, as I agree with Simon’s friend Josek, it isn’t his place to forgive the soldier. He isn’t the one directly hurt by the SS man’s actions. The people killed, if in an afterlife, would have asked Simon how he could have possibly found it in his place to forgive their murderer. Josek also explained that perhaps it was part of his sin that he now has to live with this strong sense of regret and torment. It wasn’t like he didn’t deserve to continually be reminded of the terrible acts that he had performed.

But was the soldier always such a bad man? He is a product of his society, as we have discussed in depth in class. Did he have other options as far as his life choices, or was he poisoned by the propaganda and promises of glory from the fiery likes of Hitler. Simon and the wounded soldier may have lived a similar childhood, been cut from a similar cloth, but who was to make the eternal decision of what makes a decent man on the inside other than G-d himself? This situation is very complex. It is difficult to say to what degree this man purposely believed in the evils he had been following. He has shown remorse, but is he deserving of forgiveness? This reading brought more questions than answers to me with regards to morality in the case of such forms of murder, when ordered by someone who could take your life as easily as they could take the Jews’. Did the soldier have the power to avoid his situation? Didn’t he voluntarily join the service? Where should blame in such matters be placed?