Abstract

Guilt and forgiveness, with their attendant philosophical and religious ramifications, permeate writing on the Holocaust and can also be related to South Africa’s recent history and present situation. Two controversial and provocative books (both possibly autobiographical) which tackle the question of guilt and forgiveness head on are Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower and Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, both of which have led to much debate. The central event in both texts is the slaughter of innocents, burned to death in a building during World War II, while the perpetrators (an SS officer who tells his story in The Sunflower and a concentration camp warder who refuses to tell hers in The Reader) either kill those trying to escape or totally ignore the screams of the victims. The reader has to decide whether it is plausible that years later these murderers feel genuine guilt and, if so, whether they should be forgiven – and by whom. The Reader can be seen as the obverse of The Sunflower. The two should be read in conjunction for an intriguing view of the human psyche, the dichotomy in the soul of a person preceding and succeeding his/her horrific deeds, and the questions arising of whether death can be faced by the wicked with a clear conscience, whether the fear of meeting one’s Maker engenders belated remorse, whether one changes if found out, and whether ignorance of mind betokens evil of soul which can be overcome with learning and insight.