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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

pity?

A S.S soldier, who killed innocent Jewish families by orders of his commander, asks a Jew for pity. But is he truly sorry? In my opinion, he is. In The Sunflower, Simon (the Jew) says, "I saw he was torturing himself. He was determined to gloss over nothing." If the soldier wasn't regretting all that he did, he wouldn't have called the Jew to his chamber in the first place, much less recall what made him guilty. As the text said, he "tortured" himself repeating his past. If he's strong enough to admit that what he did was wrong, he should have pity. In the confession, the soldier says, "Believe me, I would be ready to suffer worse and longer pains if by that means I could bring back the dead, at Dnepropetrovsk." He is not only willing to suffer for the Jews he killed but he would suffer more and longer just to bring those Jews back. He regrets all he did and should be able to die knowing he was at least pitied.