Simon Wiesenthal has passionately and tirelessly brought over 1,000 Nazi war criminals to justice through the Jewish Historical Documentation Center, which he founded in 1946.  The requirement of justice means holding wrongdoers to be responsible for their actions; the further question is whether we help or force them to take that responsibility on board. 

Wiesenthal's personal narrative The Sunflower places a fundamental moral question before us, in the form of his own life as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, as he tells how Karl, a dying SS man, sent for the young prisoner Wiesenthal to hear his confession: to be somebody Jewish to tell his life's story to, acknowledge his crime in being ordered to burn down a house crammed with two hundred Jewish people, men women and children, and ask his forgiveness.   Simon could not give it, remaining silent; yet he stayed with him, listened to every word, intently, holding Karl's hand throughout, sometimes feeling sorrow for him; and subsequently felt great consternation and uncertainty about his own silence.

If forgiveness is a single-level thing - say a word of absolution or a reconciled, free relationship - then would have to say there was no forgiveness.  But the essay asks us profound questions about individual and corporate responsibility and guilt, and therefore also individual and corporate forgiveness.  Could one prisoner ever speak on behalf of the Jewish people?  As his friend Josek says to Simon after hearing from him about the long deathbed conversation:

"You would have had no right to forgive him in the name of people who have not authorized you to do so.  What people have done to you yourself, you can, if you like, forgive."
    "But aren't we a single community with the same destiny, and one must answer for the other." I interrupted ... "And he showed his repentance of his own accord.  He did not want to be a murderer.  It was the Nazis who made him kill defenceless people."  (pp 65-6)

Wiesenthal could not speak words of forgiveness; yet personally he responded with compassion, even later going to visit Karl's mother.   Talking with her, he could not bear to tell her of her son's confession; again he remained silent:  "This broken woman, so deeply immersed in grief, was no recipient for my reproaches.  I was sorry for her."  (p 93)

The phrase "strength and grandeur" comes from a short essay by Richard Holloway, On Forgiveness, in which he says, "Sometimes there is strength and grandeur in the refusal to forgive ... (it) can be the righteous thing to do, the thing that justice commands." (p 55)  He illustrates this by referring to Wiesenthal, and although Holloway's heart is in the right place he seems to me to misrepresent all of Wiesenthal's moral complexity here.   The Sunflower is published in a form which included over fifty responses by world-renowned leaders and teachers to the moral questions it raises, as varied as Desmond Tutu, Herbert Marcuse, Primo Levi, The Dalai Lama, Harold Kushner, Alan Berger, Abraham Heschel, and Albert Speer.  These voices are presented in dialogue: Wiesenthal does not seek grandeur, or claim superiority; instead he is constantly questioning and seeking, and listening to other people's responses.

Wiesenthal's essay, combined with its collected responses, shows us that 'not forgiving' has many levels, and that, for example, one may forgive personally while not forgiving politically, or show compassion without agreeing to friendship.  Once we recognise this, it becomes easier to show more levels of forgiveness, without losing our balance.

Claiming authority can be healthy or unhealthy, morally and spiritually, for the protagonist and for those he or she relates to:

Men and women with creative authority do not occupy a moral high ground.  They see those who claim to as themselves needing forgiveness, clear and perhaps painful help to see they are hiding what is a stage of disability from themselves, and to encourage them to look forward to a time when they become more able to show forgiveness.  If we lack that authority at most levels (we have it at some, perhaps with our family members), we can try to step down from any sense of inner superiority we may have adopted, acknowledge our own inabilities, and show compassion at the limited levels available to us.  And gratefully accept compassionate assistance from those who offer it ... though they may be rare beings!