Large Scale Crime Analysis

Yifan Xu
Dorian Eidhin
05/07/2013
ENGL118

Forgiveness about Large-Scale Crimes Different people could have very different point of view about forgiveness, especially for the large-scale crimes like massacring Jewish during the World War II. However, different writers and scholars give different opinions about the forgiveness. Christopher Hollis, known as a university teacher and conservative politician, has different opinions about forgiveness of Large-scale Criminal with me. Hollis argues that victims should forgive about what criminal have done because of religious reasons but I think those offences should not be forgiven if they are done on purpose because forgiveness is helpless for the reality. The difference arguments
between Hollis’s and mine may cause by difference religion or belief. The first reason of disagreement between Hollis and I is although we both agree that we should forgive others guilty, we have different range of acceptable behavior to forgive. Hollis argues that Wiesenthal, the author of The Sunflower as a Jewish victim as well, should forgive Karl, that Nazi solider who slaughtered Jewish civilians before he wounded. He states that, “the law of God is the law if love…when the law of love is broken, God’s nature is frustrated. Such bonds when broken should be reforged as soon as possible” (Christopher 177). In his words, no matter what criminals did before, they still should receive forgiveness once those criminals feels guilty and repent devoutly because Hollis believe, whether in Judaism nor Christianity, humans are the children of God. However, I believe those people who commits on purpose should not be forgiven. There is a law from Judaism, if a man against the God, the God might forgive him. But if that man against others, then he will not be forgive at all. Such as that dying Nazi solider Karl, in The Sunflower, he certainly knew what will Nazi would do in the future, he still choose to join the Nazi and killed Jewish instead of followed his religion as the beginning. He knew what he had done, but only feel guilty before he died. If every confession could receive forgiveness from victims not matter how severe criminals did, then, the cost of guilty would be too light as the punishment of soul. In my opinion, forgiveness should only for the people that accidently did the wrong thing or hurt others unintentionally. For example, if a man accidently disturb others and then he apologized properly, he would be fine with his mistake. Nevertheless, if he disturb others on purpose, just apologizing might not works at all. To say the least, if Karl never got wounded, he might still firing on Jewish with a machine gun instead of feel any guilty deeply in his soul. In the second place, Christopher Hollis and I have opposite point of views about if Wiesenthal should choose to forgive Karl once Karl devotionally repented to him just before Karl died. In this case, Christopher believed Wiesenthal should forgive Karl, because Karl eventually realized what he did to those Jewish and he also explained that he had to do because he is a solider rather than a commander. Christopher thinks those explanations are not excuses, so Wiesenthal should forgive a dying man that devoutly confessed about what he has done. To the contrary, I think a man feels guilty just before he die is too late to remedy his offence. In the other words, Karl’s confession might is just for avoiding the torture from his belated religious belief, or the liberation of his soul before he die. Same as the story in The Sunflower, Karl’s action might hurt victims for one more time because after he killed Jewish on purpose, he came back and ask Jewish’s forgiveness of killing them only at the last minute of his life. Karl’s actions not only killed Jewish families, but also hurt other surviving Jewish’s soul. The third place that I disagree with Christopher Hollis is if Wiesenthal should represented all victims to forgive Karl or not.
We do agree that a man has no right try to forgive injuries of other victims. However, in The Symposium of The Sunflower, Christopher says that, “But insofar as this act of not merely a personal act of one SS man against one Jewish child but an incident in a general campaign of genocide, the author was as much a victim…” (Christopher 179). In his words, if the Large-Scale crime comes too large that millions people involved, every single victim or offenders could be seen as the whole side because every individual’s surroundings, actions and endings would become increasingly similar with each other’s that we can consider those individuals as a whole groups. For example, in The Sunflower, Wiesenthal could represents all of Jewish victims in a massacre because he was also suffered from Nazi’s torment and forgiveness would be easier because Wiesenthal might be killed soon or later by Nazi, same as those Jewish families killed by Karl. The only difference is who will shot at him actually. Whereas, I think Wiesenthal could not represent all Jewish. First of all, even though World War II was a world scale warfare and millions of Nazi solider involved, and killed millions of Jewish victims. In this case, everyone still have to treat individually, though. To illustrate, Wiesenthal and Karl even never met each other before that nurse guided Wiesenthal to Karl in the hospital before Karl died, so Karl has no possibility harass Wiesenthal and he only feel guilty about what he had done instead of feel guilty about whole Nazi’s killing history. So Wiesenthal did not need to forgive the whole Nazi and he has no right to replaces that Jewish family to forgive Karl, because nobody authorized Wiesenthal with rights to represent others. In the other hand, Wiesenthal already knew he was going to be killed soon or later, by Nazi, so I hardly
can imagine how it could be possible for a victim to forgive the killer easier rather than harder. Christopher Hollis born in 1902, and he experienced the majority of warfare in 20 century during his life, such as two World Wars, Korean Wars, and Vietnam War and so on. He might face too much death during the war time. In his era, avoiding warfare might be the top thing in civilian’s daily lives. Forgiveness could reduce anger between both sides at war and avert revenge over again. Moreover, people tend to rely on what they believe if they have to face some uncontrollable and inevitable things. Therefore, most of Christopher’s arguments are based on religious reasons and tend to moderate. But the surroundings that I living in is always peace, secured by the strongest military forces and police in the world. The only ways for me to learn how wars ruthless are from books, films or other history documentaries. A man never experience such scene might never know what really are people thinking or react during that time. As Christopher’s words, “I claim no capacity to resist temptation above the average and what fortitude I would have been able to in face of horrors so incomparably greater than any that I have ever been called on to face I cannot say” (Christopher 176). Moreover, I did not be educated with much Christianity, which is the traditional religion in America, is other reason that we think differently. As a conclusion, according to Christopher’s words, neither Christopher nor I have suffered in concentration camps and harass by Nazi, so we never know the actually feeling as the author of The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal. We could only imagine and analyze base on his novel and other historical documentaries. However, the real survivor Wiesenthal, with 89 relatives killed by Nazi during numbers of massacres, choose to find, accuse and put those killer in to poison. He found almost 1,000 Nazi fanatics during his lifetime. I believe his choice might be the only most right decision made by the real victims.

Works Cited
Christopher. The Sunflower. 2nd. New York: Schocken Books, n.d. 1 5 2013.
—. The Symposium. New York: Schocken Books, n.d. 1 5 2013.
—. The Symposium. New York: Schocken Books, n.d. 1 5 2013.