House of Bread

The complexities of forgiving: Part 1 August 2, 2011

I have been offering a series of classes on forgiving at the prison where I minister. The idea came from the pre-release material I reviewed while preparing to teach an earlier class on money management. In a checklist of important tasks an inmate should remember as he/she prepared for re-entry, I found this one: “Forgive, forgive, forgive.” I searched the material for even a paragraph or two on what it means to forgive and how one should go about it. Nothing. Hence the idea for the class. I was fortunate to find a teacher who thought it was a great idea and helped me bring it to pass.

In my preparations for teaching I discovered Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. Wiesenthal is known largely for his tireless efforts to find Nazis who directly participated in the Third Reich’s program to exterminate Jews. Through his efforts many have been arrested and brought to trial. Wiesenthal died in 2005 at the age of 96.

In The Sunflower, Wiesenthal recounts a dreadful story of being forced to the bedside of a dying soldier of the infamous SS, the powerful wing of the Nazi Party responsible for carrying out what we now call the Holocaust.  At the time Wiesenthal was a prisoner at Lemberg concentration camp, living daily in fear of being beaten, attacked by dogs or pulled aside and shot. The soldier, Karl, had been severely wounded in battle and was near death. He had asked his nurse to find a Jew to whom he could make a dying man’s confession.

The sin that assaulted Karl’s conscience was his participation in the murder of several hundred Jews in the Russian town of  Dnepropetrovsk. He and his comrades had locked the terrified Jews in a building whose floors had been doused with gasoline. When the building was ablaze and the innocents, children included, attempted to jump through the windows, they were shot and killed before they hit the ground.

Recounting his heinous deeds, Karl gripped Wiesenthal’s hand. He wanted a Jew to hear his confession and forgive him for his sins against the Jews. Wiesenthal withdrew his hand and, without a word, turned and left the room.

Afterwards, Wiesenthal told his experience to fellow prisoners and, after the war, to others. He was in turmoil over Karl’s confession and his decision to walk silently away. When he finished recounting the story in The Sunflower, Wiesenthal asked his readers, “What would you do?”

Dear reader, think about this. I’ll return in a day or two and continue.