Sunflower Symposium Authors

Positionality + Key Points

Jean Amery

Positionality

• French

• Atheist

• Survivor of Holocaust

Key Points

• ANTI-FORGIVENESS

• choice ultimately irrelevant

  • Psychology —> we are primed to forgive or not forgive based on feelings, circumstances of day, and what happened prior

  • Political —> what is more important is what you (SW) did with the rest of his life (he was a Nazi hunter and went after criminals which is more important than if he forgave Karl or not)

Primo Levi

Positionality

• Jewish

• Holocaust Survivor

Key Points

• ANTI-FORGIVENESS

• Tokenism

  • SW had to represent the entire Jewish population effected by the Holocaust

  • problem to ask for one Jew to forgive him on behalf of all Jews impacted on Holocaust

• Historical Context

  • image of a Jew in Karl’s mind was influenced by the stereotypes of the time in Nazi Germany

• Karl’s request was on his death bed

  • raises questions about his sincerity

  • Karl was Christian —> could be more worried about making it to heaven and the afterlife than feeling guilt for his actions

• request puts extra burden on the victims

Lawrence Langer

Positionality

• Holocaust scholar from Yale

• Interviewed many Holocaust survivors

Key Points

• ANTI-FORGIVENESS

• moment Karl pulled the trigger and committed those acts he gave up the chance for forgives (OTHER MOMENTS MATTER MORE)

  • AND crime of Holocaust itself is unforgivable

• the “common” language used by Karl is not appropriate for discussing the Holocaust and the atrocities committed

• the Sunflower Symposium is a memoir

  • can’t take everything verbatim

• Survivor’s guilt/Stockholm syndrome

  • additional burden on victim

• role playing about the Holocaust trivializes it

Cynthia Ozick

Positionality

• Jewish

• Lived in NYC

• experienced lots of anti-semitism

Key Points

• ANTI-FORGIVENESS

• Pro-Vengeance —> Public Justice

• forgiveness brutalizes victims

• Brute vs. Man of Conscience = SAME

  • Brute - doesn’t have conscience or morals —> doesn’t know any better

  • Man of Conscience - have humanity + compassion left —> knows what they are doing is wrong yet still do it anyway

The Dali Lama

Positionality

• spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism

• survived Chinese invasion fo Tibet

Key Points

• PRO-FORGIVENESS

• “forgive, but don’t forget”

• religious parable

  • story about fellow monk who was imprisoned by the Chinese —> said his greatest fear was losing compassion for the Chinese

  • emphasis on compassion

Jose Hobday

Positionality

• Catholic nun

• Native American (experienced persecution, genocide, etc by US)

Key Points

• PRO-FORGIVENESS

• “forgive and forget”

  • in order to fully overcome what you’ve been though, you have to let it go completely

• Karl asked for forgiveness

  • not question of whether he deserves forgiveness or should have asked the question because he did

  • bottom line - asking is enough

Dith Pran

Positionality

• survivor of Cambodian genocide

Key Points

• PRO-FORGIVENESS

• who can be forgiven = soldiers

  • could have been brainwashed, poorly educated, poor, in fear for their lives or their families lives, etc

• who can’t be forgiven = leaders/masterminds

• key to forgiveness = understanding

  • can understand why soldiers would have committed the crimes

  • cannot understand why the leaders/masterminds committed and came up with the crimes

Smail Balić

Positionality

• Muslim

• historian

Key Points

• PRO-FORGIVENESS

• Karl’s remorse = religious conversion

  • gets a blank slate, becomes a new person who is dismissed of their crimes

• Role of bystander

  • bigger than conversation between SW and Karl

  • society itself is also to blame and at fault - they saw/knew what was happening and did nothing

  • even if not the perpetrator, if you were a part of a society that endorses hate and does nothing about it = bystander