To forgive or not to forgive--that is the question.
I received a note from "Chucky" toward whom I feel nothing but rancor and acrimony, saying he had heard Elie Wiesel speak and the question of forgiveness came up and Mr. Wiesel said it was a good thing, and if someone like him could forgive, why couldn't I?

I don't believe that for a second. Chucky doesn't know that while he was still pooping in his diapers, I heard Elie Wiesel speak at a university, and as always the tired old question of forgiveness came up. Forgiveness toward the Nazis. Elie Wiesel was 15 when he was sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis. He survived and wrote "Night" among other works and has tirelessly comitted himself to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive.

He won the Nobel Prize and said "To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all." And one person cannot ever justify "forgiveness" on behalf of millions of other people. There are some sins too great to ever be forgiven (my opinion.) He is a great man and "Night" was a horrifying account of personal experience. It is burned in my memory. The people who died under the Nazis would have to decide one by one if they would forgive what was done to them; it is not up to anyone else to decide that.

When I heard a mother on one of those true crime shows say that she had to forgive the serial killer who abducted, raped and murdered her daughter so she would have "closure," and went to the prison where he was incarcerated to meet with him to tell him she forgave him, somebody should have slapped her on the head. I bet her daughter wouldn't have felt so kindly about forgiving this monster. What mother could forgive that?

This is the truth folks: Only the person against whom the crime was comitted has the right to say I forgive you--or not. And I'll say it again. Some things cannot be forgiven.

susil