Forgiving But Not Forgetting Calling the Holocaust a crime against humanity may be more than fitting, but to say that it is unforgivable may be a slight stretch. Simon Weisenthal's, The Sunflower, discusses the author's experience in the concentration camps during the Nazi Germany era and how a dying S.S. officer, Karl Seidl, changed his perspective on the Nazis as a whole. Forgiveness is understanding the offender’s actions and leaving the past behind to make for a better future as it is the more humane thing to do; for instance, something that Simon had done when he met Karl’s mother, allowing her to think of her son as a peaceful young man. Understanding an action is a large step in the concept of forgiveness because recognizing the events that took place is what allows the brain to process the information and contemplate the reasoning behind the action. According to Sven Alkalaj, a responder to Simon, “without recognition of what happened, there can never be forgiveness” (103). A person can easily say they would never forgive an S.S. officer, that would be the initial response. However, if we were to think about why those soldiers did what they did, we may understand the desire to protect family, fit in, and avoid suspicion during a fascist regime. The Stanford Prison Experiment conducted By Philip Zimbardo, illustrates how under the right conditions and enough peer pressure, even the average college student can have a sadistic side to them. Although, the S.S. officers were under orders and the Stanford students volunteered, the results were the same, with both officers and students taking pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. According to Zimbardo’s conclusion of the experiment, "Good people can be induced, seduced, and initiated into behaving in evil ways. They can also be led to act in irrational, stupid, self-destructive, antisocial,