eyes before leaping with the child in his arms. The mother jumped a moment later. ‘Perhaps
they were already dead when they hit the pavement,’ the dying SS man said to Wiesenthal. ‘It was frightful. Screams mixed with volleys of shots probably intended to drown the shrieks. I
can never forget – it haunts me.’
Despite additional brandy rations, many of the young SS men in his unit hadn’t slept well that night. Their platoon leader rebuked them next morning: ‘You and your sensitive
feelings. Men, you cannot go on like this. This is war! One must be hard! They are not our people. The Jew is not a human being! The Jews are the cause of all our misfortunes! And when you shoot
one of them, it is not the same thing as shooting one of us: it doesn’t matter whether it is man, woman, or child. They are different from us.’ But one SS man, at least, could no longer
believe these words he’d heard half his life.
In the battle of Taganrog, when he and his comrades left the trenches to storm a Russian position, this one man suddenly stood rooted to the ground. His hands, holding his rifle with fixed
bayonet, quivered. For, before him on the battlefield, he saw the burning family – the father with the child and behind them the mother –coming towards him. The
thought,
‘No, I can’t shoot at them a second time!’
crossed his mind as a shell exploded in his face.
What the dying man wanted now was absolution to be given by the anonymous Jew brought before him. He told Wiesenthal: ‘I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him.
Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.’
Left alone with the young German, Wiesenthal had time to reflect that true repentance had brought together a dying ‘murderer who didn’t want to be a murderer, but had been made into
one by a murderous ideology’ with a Jew doomed to die at the hands of these same murderers, but resisting death because he ‘yearned to see the end of all the horror that blighted the
world.’ And he knew that he ‘was not yet ready to be touched by the hand of death.’
As the SS man’s hand groped for his, Simon held it out of reach and sat in the shadow of death contemplating bright sunlight outside and almost envying the dying murderer the traditional
sunflower that would soon decorate his grave ‘to connect him with the living world. Butterflies will visit . . . For me there will be no sunflower. I’ll be buried in a mass grave, with
corpses piled on top of me. No sunflower will ever light my darkness and no butterflies will ever dance on my terrible tomb.’
Words gave way to silence as the dying man’s confession petered out with a plea that it not go unanswered.
Having heard him out, Wiesenthal left the room without speaking a word. The SS man died a few hours later.
Back in Janowskà that night, Wiesenthal told a handful of his fellow inmates what had happened to him. One of them exclaimed: ‘One less!’ and another said,
‘So you saw a murderer dying? I would like to see that ten times a day.’
A more thoughtful companion named Josek remarked: ‘When you started telling us, I feared at first that you had really forgiven him. You would have had no right to do this in the name of
people who hadn’t authorized you to do so. What people have done to you yourself, you can, if you like, forgive and forget. That is your own affair. But it would have been a terrible sin to
burden your conscience with other people’s sufferings.’
This terrible burden, however, would prove to be Wiesenthal’s vocation for more than four postwar decades. Nor would he let go of the moral issue he faced at the
death-bed of a man who wished to die in peace, but couldn’t because his terrible crime gave him no rest.
The Talmud had taught Wiesenthal that, even on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, one cannot be
they were already dead when they hit the pavement,’ the dying SS man said to Wiesenthal. ‘It was frightful. Screams mixed with volleys of shots probably intended to drown the shrieks. I
can never forget – it haunts me.’
Despite additional brandy rations, many of the young SS men in his unit hadn’t slept well that night. Their platoon leader rebuked them next morning: ‘You and your sensitive
feelings. Men, you cannot go on like this. This is war! One must be hard! They are not our people. The Jew is not a human being! The Jews are the cause of all our misfortunes! And when you shoot
one of them, it is not the same thing as shooting one of us: it doesn’t matter whether it is man, woman, or child. They are different from us.’ But one SS man, at least, could no longer
believe these words he’d heard half his life.
In the battle of Taganrog, when he and his comrades left the trenches to storm a Russian position, this one man suddenly stood rooted to the ground. His hands, holding his rifle with fixed
bayonet, quivered. For, before him on the battlefield, he saw the burning family – the father with the child and behind them the mother –coming towards him. The
thought,
‘No, I can’t shoot at them a second time!’
crossed his mind as a shell exploded in his face.
What the dying man wanted now was absolution to be given by the anonymous Jew brought before him. He told Wiesenthal: ‘I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him.
Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.’
Left alone with the young German, Wiesenthal had time to reflect that true repentance had brought together a dying ‘murderer who didn’t want to be a murderer, but had been made into
one by a murderous ideology’ with a Jew doomed to die at the hands of these same murderers, but resisting death because he ‘yearned to see the end of all the horror that blighted the
world.’ And he knew that he ‘was not yet ready to be touched by the hand of death.’
As the SS man’s hand groped for his, Simon held it out of reach and sat in the shadow of death contemplating bright sunlight outside and almost envying the dying murderer the traditional
sunflower that would soon decorate his grave ‘to connect him with the living world. Butterflies will visit . . . For me there will be no sunflower. I’ll be buried in a mass grave, with
corpses piled on top of me. No sunflower will ever light my darkness and no butterflies will ever dance on my terrible tomb.’
Words gave way to silence as the dying man’s confession petered out with a plea that it not go unanswered.
Having heard him out, Wiesenthal left the room without speaking a word. The SS man died a few hours later.
Back in Janowskà that night, Wiesenthal told a handful of his fellow inmates what had happened to him. One of them exclaimed: ‘One less!’ and another said,
‘So you saw a murderer dying? I would like to see that ten times a day.’
A more thoughtful companion named Josek remarked: ‘When you started telling us, I feared at first that you had really forgiven him. You would have had no right to do this in the name of
people who hadn’t authorized you to do so. What people have done to you yourself, you can, if you like, forgive and forget. That is your own affair. But it would have been a terrible sin to
burden your conscience with other people’s sufferings.’
This terrible burden, however, would prove to be Wiesenthal’s vocation for more than four postwar decades. Nor would he let go of the moral issue he faced at the
death-bed of a man who wished to die in peace, but couldn’t because his terrible crime gave him no rest.
The Talmud had taught Wiesenthal that, even on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, one cannot be
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