The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness: Mark Goulden Summary & Analysis

Goulden struggles to write and think about the crimes of the Nazis, stunned by the sheer magnitude of what happened. He notes that of the 4.4 million people who were condemned to Auschwitz (roughly the population of Denmark, only 60,000 were still alive when the camp was liberated, meaning that 98.5% of all deportees were murdered by the Germans.

This prompts Goulden to point out that the burden of guilt lay on all of the Germans—those who participated in those acts and those who let them happen—and believes that the Germans have made no acts of atonement as a nation since the war. He sees that the people of Germany, after only thirty years, have been honored by the president as allies.

Goulden observes that people don’t want to talk about the mass murder of 6 million people, nor do they want to read about it. There have been euphemisms created for what happened to mask the horrors of what occurred. He understands how easy it is to forget.

Thus, forgiving should come at a greater price, Goulden asserts. He wonders how any living person could forgive these monstrous acts, and whether humans can expect even God to exonerate the Nazis. Goulden concludes by saying he would have silently left Karl’s deathbed “having made quite certain there was now one Nazi less in the world!”