Simon Wiesenthal

Tortured and miserable; all waiting for death, and some wishing for it. This was the daily life in a concentration camp as described by Simon Wiesenthal in his work The Sunflower. He describes the hard work, unbearable conditions and continuous deaths that he and many other people had experienced in the camps. How could a human be so cruel and sadistic? Human beings are all fallen from God, causing imperfection. In this work Wiesenthal uses two main people to portray his story, himself, or Simon, and an SS man named Karl whom begs for Simon’s forgiveness on behalf of the men that he has murdered. Throughout Simon’s life in the concentration camp he learns that it is human nature is to attempt to survive at all costs through lives filled with much joy and much pain, constantly searching for his individualism and inner-self beyond the dehumanization of the camps, and label of being a Jew.

As a result of the fall, mankind is fallen and therefore sinful and full of greed. Romans 3:23 states, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The whole purpose given to our species is to survive and reproduce in order to keep the human race alive. Because of this, it is programmed into the human mind to fight to survive, sometimes even at the cost of many others. This is shown in nature most commonly in the fight or flight reaction, humans do whichever action will most increase their probability of surviving. The fight for survival was best exemplified by the SS men and many others who served under Hitler. At first the SS men were happy to serve their country as Karl expressed, “I wanted to play my part in that sort of thing (33).” Then after they were signed up and in too deep, they found out what they had to do. Many men still did not have a problem but those who did continued on with their jobs out of fear for Hitler and their superiors who certainly would have no problem killing them as well.

The other group that had to do everything to survive in the concentration camps was the prisoners. This was illustrated by how hard they worked for fear of death for “slacking off,” many even ended up being worked to death. The prisoners were also very cautious of what was done and said in front of the SS men, as they had the power to kill anyone at any time, even without reason. In order to stay alert of the guards’ positions the prisoners would pronounce the word “six” when a guard was near to notify others(62). When Simon was dreaming about the SS man from the veteran’s hospital and cried out in the night he was quickly silenced by his fellow bunk mates to ensure that they would not disturb the guards for fear of death (68).

Both of these men fought to survive through their both joyful and painful lives, some more than others. No human experience is the same and certainly none were the same as the ones lead by those in those camps despite what side of the rifle they were on. The SS men lived relatively