Mauthausen, Austria; Simon Wiesenthal is working alongside his friends Arthur, Josek and Adam under the most tortuous of circumstances. The conditions are unimaginable; their Nazi captors force them to perform hard labor whilst at the same time doling out starvation rations. The men are given enough food so that they can stand. If they can stand, they are deemed fit for work. Once they become unfit for work, they are killed. Such is Simon's life in one of the most infamous of the Nazi death camps. He is no longer human and does not recognize himself as such.
Arthur and Josek bicker a lot. The cause of this friction is usually Josek's unshakeable faith, which remains steadfast. Arthur and Simon, however, have begun to question the nature of a God who sees their suffering and does nothing to save them; another prisoner jokes that maybe God is on vacation, and Simon begins to see a truth in this.
One morning, Simon is taken from his friends and put to work in a hospital that has been set up at the technical school nearby. Ironically it is a place that is familiar to Simon; before the Nazis came, he studied architecture there. He walks past rows of gravestones, each with a sunflower on its top. Simon finds himself envying the dead soldiers who have been laid to rest there because they are honored and remembered; he fears he will be thrown into an unmarked grave with the millions of others. He had expected going back to the school for pleasant memories, but he is surprised to remember that there was rampant anti-Semitism even before the war broke out. He recalls the Day Without Jews that students had set up, in which Jewish students were brutalized.
Simon stands in line with the other prisoners waiting to be assigned duties. A nurse approaches him and asks him if he is Jewish. When he says that he is, she takes him to the bedside of a dying soldier. Karl is a Nazi, and he is bandaged from head to toe. His wounds are untreatable. He tells Simon that he must confess a terrible crime that he has committed and needs absolution and forgiveness from a Jew before he dies. His story begins in Stuttgart; he was a normal kid, but was swayed by Hitler's rhetoric and bombast, and he joined the Hitler Youth. He was not raised this way; his parents objected to his joining, but he did it anyway. He did well amongst his peers and volunteered for the SS. Simon wonders what crime he has committed beyond believing the speeches of a dictator. He still sees him in a gentle light, but Karl continues; three hundred Jews were forced into a house and the house set on fire. Karl saw a family jumping from a window of the house; mother, father and a small boy doing whatever they could to save their own lives. Karl saw them, alerted his unit and together they shot them as they jumped. Karl is haunted by the image and weeps.
Simon has tried to leave several times, disgusted by the story and the actions of a man who could so easily have let the family jump to safety. Karl tells him to stay. Simon recalls a similar story that he has heard around the camp; a young child named Eli from the Lemberg Ghetto had miraculously survived an incident in which a fake kindergarten had been set up to lure parents into sending their children there. When they did, the children were whisked away to the gas chambers and the kindergarten disappeared. Eli had been sick that day and his parents had kept him home. He was the last child that Simon remembered seeing.
Karl is still talking. He fought in Crimea but was still haunted by the images of the family he had murdered. Climbing out of the trench one day the memory rendered him paralyzed for a second, and a shell exploded next to him, which had torn his body to shreds. Karl asks for Simon's forgiveness so that he can die in peace. Simon is silent. He gets up from his chair and leaves the room.
That night he tells his friends what he has experienced. They rejoice that there is one less Nazi in the world, and Josek commends Simon because he tells him that he cannot offer forgiveness on behalf of someone else. The next day, when he returns to work at the hospital, he learns that Karl has died but that he has left Simon his possessions and an address for his mother. Simon refuses to take the things. He tries to tell his friends, but they have already grown bored with the story.
Simon's friends die at Auschwitz. Simon becomes friendly with a Catholic prisoner named Bolek. Still troubled by the incident with Karl, Simon tells Bolek the story, but Bolek reacts differently to his other friends. He tells him that he should have offered forgiveness because Karl had nobody else to ask.
Mauthausen is liberated in 1945. Simon miraculously survives the war but carries reminders of it everywhere. The sight of a sunflower reminds him of Karl, and remembering his mother's name and address, Simon decides to visit her. She is a kind, sweet woman who confirms Karl's story about his childhood. Simon does not tell her how he came to know Karl, or about what he did, because he does not want to steal her memories of her son from her.
So, reader. What would you have done in Simon's shoes? He asks this question after completing his story, and the second half of the book consists of responses to this question. There are 53 responses in all, from a variety of scholars, religious leaders and men who experienced the camps just like Simon did. Most answers draw on religious beliefs and their moral upbringing. There quickly emerges two schools of thought; some agree that Simon could not offer forgiveness even if he had wanted to, because the crime was not committed against him, and he cannot offer forgiveness for a crime committed against someone else. Some, mostly the Jewish respondents, observe that merely asking for forgiveness does not mean that there is repentance others argue that repentance does not in of itself qualify for forgiveness. Some believe Karl demonstrated his anti-Semitism even on his death bed by believing that a random Jew could somehow represent the Jewish family he had murdered, proving that he saw Jews as a mass rather than as individuals.
The Christian voices in the group believe Simon should have granted forgiveness because it has no limits. If Karl was as genuine in repentance as Simon believed, then he should be forgiven, and this forgiveness would also have released Simon from his turmoil too.
All of the respondents agree that even if he did not explicitly say the words, "You are forgiven" to Karl, Simon acted in a kind and compassionate way considering the circumstances he was in at the time, and they also agree that even if the crimes were forgiven, they should never be forgotten.
