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Chapter 6. Miscarriages of Mercy?
- University of Michigan Press
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chapter 6 Miscarriages of Mercy? When the problem of mercy arises, the conversation-ending question is often, would you forgive the Nazis? Such a question is usually meant rhetorically, as the reductio ad absurdum that ends debate. How could one forgive the Nazis? Yet, if we take the question seriously, there are three different problems to unpack here. First is the question addressed in the last chapter: are there any pardons that are wrong, and how can we reason about them if we have rejected kanticism? My answer in chapter 5 was to point to a “common-law” approach to ethical argument that allows for decision making with only provisional rules and that allows for the possibility of acting on the basis of face-to-face judgments that cannot always be immediately articulated. Second is the question of standing: how can anyone have standing to give mercy when the victim is dead and unable or unwilling to forgive? I addressed this problem in chapter 4 by pointing out that because mercy (and punishment) are now about moving from a place of seeing the wrong as wrong to a settlement and future beingwith , the past victim has no special standing. Instead, standing must be granted to all witnesses to the wrong who can be“potential victims”in community with the offender. Third is the question I propose to address here: aren’t some crimes so horrendous as to be categorically unforgivable? Simon Wiesenthal, in his famous book The Sun›ower, describes his own dilemma of conscience when a dying SS soldier named Karl calls Simon to his bedside to confess his part in an atrocity. Simon is then a young Jewish man, just out of college before the Germans take over Poland. He has been incarcerated by the Germans because of his Jewishness and, every day and every 134 minute, experiences the degradation, starvation, death, sickness, humiliation, and dehumanization of a Nazi work/death camp. Simon fully expects to die soon at the hands of Karl’s fellow SS of‹cers. He expects his body soon to be shoved disdainfully into a mass grave and forgotten. Yet Simon listens to Karl’s agonized confession, holds Karl’s hand, retrieves his mother’s letter from the ›oor when it falls, brushes away a ›y, and helps Karl get a drink of water. Karl tells how he joined the Hitler Youth and later became an SS trooper against his parents’ wishes. He participated in herding hundreds of Jewish families into a house and then shot those who tried to escape after the building had been set a‹re. He is haunted by the face of a child he shot, as his parents jumped with him from the second story. Like Freud’s account of the voice of Clorinda, the traumatic image of this child came to Karl later, on the battle‹eld, and he froze, unable to ‹re. He was hit, then, half his face blown away. But even dying, Karl is tortured by his deed and seeks the solace of confession. Simon believes that Karl is sincere in his repentance. He even feels compassion for Karl’s suffering. But when Karl says he cannot die in peace without a response from Simon, Simon ‹nds nothing to say. He leaves the room in silence. Later that evening, throughout the war, and in the time following, Simon is in turn haunted by his traumatic encounter with Karl. Was he right not to offer forgiveness? The day after Karl’s confession, when Simon is marched back to his degrading work at the hospital, Karl is dead but has “bequeathed” Simon his possessions , on the top of which is Karl’s mother’s name and address. Simon refuses the possessions but remembers the name and address. After the war, he visits Karl’s mother. He does not tell her that her son crammed hundreds of Jewish people into a house and then set it on ‹re. He does not tell her that her son watched and shot as a mother and father, holding their young son and shielding his eyes, jumped to their deaths from an upper story. He allows the soldier’s mother to remember him as “a good boy” who was the priest’s favorite, who was pious and helpful, and who joined the Hitler youth against their wishes. Was Simon right not to tell her? In the extensive commentary that accompanies the newest edition of Wiesenthal’s moving story, the debate continues. Some...