When they have an opportunity to hear Karl's confession, Simon is pressed to understand exactly what the limits of forgiveness might be. Having seen the deaths of his friends in seemingly unforgivable circumstances, he understands the real cost of three hundred Jewish lives, not to mention the rest of the six million that he will eventually learn about. He is challenged in his religion, because as a man of faith, he must decide whether he would want for the murderer of his kin to be held accountable or to be punished.
That is the process of absolution. By putting the victim in the executioner's seat, we see the crux of the issue (this because allegedly, in his religious faith, he can petition God to forgive the man's soul so he doesn't receive eternal torment for his sins). The crux of forgiveness is therefore whether any of us should be held accountable for our evil. This is certainly the suggestion of the title and of the premise. The reader must understand that the Holocaust is not something that Western artists suddenly imagined at the same time; the reason Holocaust is remembered is because it really happened.
So each person has a question posed to them by this book, and it is a serious question because it is not asked by the character of some hypothetical plot; the question comes from the most archetypal victim who ever existed in the modern era—a deeply religious Holocaust survivor. If the most victimized party can forgive the most undeniably evil party, a Nazi murderer who enjoyed his time murdering Jews, then who would not be forgiven? A reader now must decide what they would do: Forgive, or not forgive? Because of the book's historical merit, the reader can literally choose to forgive the actual Nazis, if they want to; at least that is the suggestion of his writing.
