The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness.

WIESENTHAL, Simon.

Item Number: 53944

New York: Schocken Books, 1997.

Early printing of the re-issue of this classic work. Octavo, original boards. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Michael Hecht Simon Wiesenthal 10.12.03.” Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Royce Becker. Edited by Henry James Cargas and Bonny V. Fetterman.

While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to--and obtain absolution from--a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing. But even years after the way had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place. In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past.