The Sunflower

by Simon Wiesenthal

  ALAN L. BERGER is the Raddock Eminent Scholar and chairman of Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He was formerly professor in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University where he founded the Jewish Studies Program. Among his books are Crisis and Covenant and Judaism in the Modern World.

  ROBERT McAFEE BROWN is Professor Emeritus of Theology and Ethics at the Pacific School of Religion. He also taught at Union Theological Seminary, Macalester College, and Stanford University. He is the author of Theology in a New Key; Elie Wiesel, Messenger to All Humanity; and Spirituality and Religion and Violence: A Primer for White America.

  HARRY JAMES CARGAS is the author of thirty-one books, including A Christian Response to the Holocaust; Conversations with Elie Wiesel; Voices from the Holocaust; and Reflections of a Post-Auschwitz Christian. He is the only Catholic ever appointed to the International Advisory Board of Yad Vashem. He serves as vice president of the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust, and on the executive board of the Catholic Center for Holocaust Studies. He is Professor Emeritus of Literature and Language at Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri.

  ROBERT COLES is Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities at Harvard Medical School, and James Agee Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard University. He has published studies on children of poverty, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize, and numerous books on the “inner life” of children. He is the author of Children of Crisis (five volumes); The Moral Life of Children; The Spiritual Life of Children; The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination; and The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism.

  THE DALAI LAMA, Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, is spiritual leader of Buddhists around the world and revered as a teacher and man of peace. In 1959 he escaped to India, following China's invasion and occupation of Tibet. As spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people, he has consistently advocated policies of nonviolence and compassion in the face of aggression. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

  EUGENE J. FISHER is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. He holds a doctorate in Hebrew Studies from New York University and has authored or edited over a dozen books in the field of Jewish-Christian studies, including Spiritual Pilgrimage: Pope John Paul II on the Jews and Judaism, coedited with Leon Klenicki, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1995.

  EDWARD H. FLANNERY is a Roman Catholic priest living near Providence, Rhode Island. He served as a member of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations and on the executive committee of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel. Father Flannery is the author of The Anguish of the Jews.

  EVA FLEISCHNER is Professor Emerita of Religion at Montclair State University. A member of the Church Relations Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and of the Advisory Board of the U.S. Catholic Conference, Office of Catholic-Jewish Relations, she is the author of The View of Judaism in German Christian Theology and Auschwitz: Beginning a New Era?

  MATTHEW FOX is president of the new University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California. He is the author of numerous books on spirituality and culture, including The Reinvention of Work; Original Blessing; and The Physics of Angels with scientist Rupert Sheldrake. He was a Roman Catholic priest of the Dominican Order for twenty-eight years. He is now an Episcopal priest.

  REBECCA GOLDSTEIN is a professor of philosophy turned fiction writer. Her novels and short stories have won many awards, and she was recently named a MacArthur Fellow. Her books include The Mind-Body Problem, The Dark Sister, Strange Attractors, and Mazel.

  MARY GORDON is the author of four best-selling novels—Final Payments, The Company of Women, Men and Angels, and The Other Side. She has published a book of novellas, The Rest of Life; a collection of stories, Temporary Shelter; a book of essays, Good Boys and Dead Girls; and a memoir, The Shadow Man. A recipient of the Lila Acheson Wallace–Reader's Digest Writer's Award and of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she is a professor of English at Barnard College.

  MARK GOULDEN, a British journalist and publisher, began his career as a reporter and editor for several newspapers and periodicals. Chairman of the British publishing firm of W. H. Allen and Co. for thirty-six years, he received numerous citations and awards for his work in humanitarian causes. He was also a pioneer in British civil aviation. He died in 1980.

  HANS HABE, born in Hungary, began his literary career as a reporter and newspaper editor in Vienna. His most noted book, The Mission, is a documentary novel on the Evian Conference in 1938, which sought to deal with the refugee problem resulting from Nazi persecutions. After World War II, he was editor-in-chief of Die Neue Zeitung (Munich). A recipient of the Herzl Prize, his works include Poisoned Stream and Proud Zion. He died in 1977.

  YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI grew up in New York, the son of a Holocaust survivor. He makes his home in Israel, where he is a senior writer for The Jerusalem Report magazine. He has written Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, an autobiography.

  ARTHUR HERTZBERG is the Bronfman Visiting Professor of the Humanities at New York University and Professor Emeritus of Religion at Dartmouth College. Rabbi Hertzberg is the author of many books, including The Zionist Idea; The French Enlightenment and the Jews; The Jews in America; and Judaism. He is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New York Review of Books.

  THEODORE M. HESBURGH, C.S.C., became president emeritus of Notre Dame in 1987, after heading the institution for thirty-five years. Paralleling his career in higher education, Dr. Hesburgh's life in public service includes fifteen presidential appointments as well as service to the Church under four popes. He is a recipient of the Medal of Freedom for his long-standing interest in peace and development issues and a board member of the U.S. Institute for Peace.

  ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL, the noted theologian and philosopher, was born in Warsaw and taught extensively in Europe before coming to the United States in 1940. He was chosen as Martin Buber's successor at the Frankfort Lehrhaus, an institute for adult Jewish education. He taught Jewish philosophy, ethics, and mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America until his death in 1972. Rabbi Heschel was active in the civil rights movement, marching with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and in the Jewish-Christian dialogue preceding Vatican Council II. His original philosophy of religion is reflected in his numerous books: Man Is Not Alone; God in Search of Man; The Prophets; The Sabbath; and Israel: An Echo of Eternity.

  SUSANNAH HESCHEL holds the Eli Black Chair in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus and co-editor of Insider/Outsider: Multi-culturalism and the American Jews.

  JOSé HOBDAY is a Franciscan nun of Seneca, Iroquois, and Seminole descent. Her writing on Catholic and Native American spirituality as well as Native American affairs has appeared in many publications, including Parabola, Cross-Currents, The National Catholic Reporter, and Praying magazine, where she has been a columnist for ten years. She lectures nationally and internationally and has recorded over a dozen cassettes.

  CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS, a British journalist and author, was a former member of Parliament. He served in the R.A.F. during World War II. Among his published books are Church and Economics; The Papacy; and Holy Places: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Monuments in the Holy Land. He died in 1977.

  RODGER KAMENETZ is a poet and author of The Jew in the Lotus, an account of Jewish Buddhist dialogue. He directs the Jewish Studies minor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

  CARDINAL FRANZ KÖNIG, appointed cardinal in 1958, was formerly archbishop of Vienna. A theologian and scholar, he is the author of The Bible in View of World History and the three-volume Christ and World Religions.

  HAROLD S. KUSHNER is Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts. He is the author of such influential works as When Bad Things Happen to Good People; When
Children Ask About God; and To Life! A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking. He has taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Clark University.

  LAWRENCE L. LANGER is Professor Emeritus of English at Simmons College in Boston. Among his books are The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination; Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory; Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology; and Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays.

  PRIMO LEVI, born in Turin, was both a working chemist and a distinguished writer who won almost every major literary award in his native Italy. Arrested as a member of the anti-Fascist resistance, he was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, where he remained until the camp was liberated. Levi's experience in the death camp is the subject of his two memoirs, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening. He is also the author of The Periodic Table; The Drowned and the Saved; Moments of Reprieve; and If Not Now, When? He died in 1987.

  DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and author of Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust 1933–1945 and Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

  FRANKLIN H. LITTELL studied history with Clair Francis Littell, theology with Reinhold Niebuhr, and church history with Roland Bainton and Kenneth Scott Latourette. He is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Temple University, and has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in several schools since 1986, most recently at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He has written over two dozen books, including The Crucifixion of the Jews, and several hundred articles.

  HUBERT G. LOCKE recently retired as dean and professor of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is cofounder (with Franklin Littell) and vice president of the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust. Among his books are Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemoeller's Letters from Moabit Prison and The Church Confronts the Nazis.

  ERICH H. LOEWY, M.D., is Professor and Alumni Chair of Bioethics at the University of California at Davis. He is the author of Ethical Dilemmas in Modern Medicine: A Physician's Viewpoint and Suffering and the Beneficent Community.

  HERBERT MARCUSE, who taught philosophy at Columbia University, Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California at San Diego, was one of the most perceptive analysts of advanced industrial society and a leading influence on the New Left. Born in Berlin, he left Germany for the United States in 1934 and served with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services and the State Department during World War II. His major works are Eros and Civilization; One-Dimensional Man; Soviet Marxism; and Reason and Revolution. He died in 1979.

  MARTIN E. MARTY has taught American religious history at the University of Chicago since 1963 and made comparative studies of worldwide movements such as fundamentalisms and ethnonationalisms. He is also senior editor of The Christian Century and author of many books, including the three-volume Modern American Religion.

  CYNTHIA OZICK has won numerous prizes and awards for her novels, short stories, and essays. She is the author most recently of Fame & Folly: Essays and The Puttermesser Papers, a novel. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her work has been translated into most major languages.

  JOHN T. PAWLIKOWSKI, a priest of the Servite Order, is Professor of Social Ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He has served on the U.S. Holocaust memorial council since its inception in 1980. He is a member of the Catholic Bishops’ Commission for Relations with Jews and is the author of The Challenge of the Holocaust for Christian Theology and Jesus and the Theology of Israel.

  DENNIS PRAGER has been a radio talk show host in Los Angeles since 1982, and has lectured widely on moral, personal, and religious issues. Since 1985, he has been writing his own quarterly journal, Ultimate Issues. His books include The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism coauthored with Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, and Think a Second Time: 43 Essays on 43 Subjects.

  DITH PRAN's wartime life was portrayed in the award-winning movie The Killing Fields. He served as a war correspondent, together with Sydney Schanberg of The New York Times, covering the civil war in Cambodia from 1972 to 1975. He was arrested by the Khmer Rouge and exiled to the forced labor camps where he endured four years of starvation and torture before escaping to Thailand, and later, the United States. In 1976, Schanberg accepted the Pulitzer Prize on behalf of himself and Pran. Pran is a photojournalist for The New York Times and continues his efforts to publicize the plight of the Cambodian people and bring the Khmer Rouge leaders to the World Court.

  TERENCE PRITTIE, a noted British journalist and author, reported from West Germany for the Manchester Guardian from 1946 to 1963. Subsequently, he served as a political consultant on Middle East affairs for the BBC and other news agencies. He is the author of Germans Against Hitler and Willy Brandt: Portrait of a Statesman. He died in 1985.

  MATTHIEU RICARD is a Buddhist Monk and French-language interpreter for the Dalai Lama. He completed a doctoral thesis in molecular biology at the Pasteur Institute in 1972, but left academia for Buddhism shortly thereafter. He has translated and edited numerous books on Tibetan Buddhism. He is the author of Journey to Enlightenment and co-author of the best-selling book Le Moine et Le Philosophe with his father, philosopher and writer Jean-François Revel. Ricard currently lives at the monastery of Shechen near Kathmandu, Nepal.

  JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN is the northeast regional director of Amnesty International USA and a Fellow at the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle for Human Rights and Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg.

  SIDNEY SHACHNOW (Maj. Gen. U.S. Army, Ret.) was born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1934 and was an inmate in the Kovno concentration camp from 1941 until his escape in 1944. Immigrating to America in 1950, he subsequently enlisted in the United States Army and fought in Vietnam as a Green Beret. A recipient of many decorations for valor in combat, he served as the Commanding General of the Special Forces from 1991 to 1992.

  DOROTHEE SOELLE is a theologian who teaches in her native Germany as well as at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Among her publications are Choosing Life; Of War and Love; Political Theology; and Beyond Mere Obedience. She was the first theologian to be awarded the Theodore Heuss Medal for “civil courage and democracy.”

  ALBERT SPEER was a high-ranking Nazi, one of the planners of the Third Reich and Hitler's minister of armaments from 1942 to 1945. At the Nuremberg trials, he admitted responsibility for actions of the Nazis and was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. In prison he wrote two books: Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. He died in 1981.

  MANÈS SPERBER, French author and editor, was born in Galicia and educated in Vienna, where he studied psychology with Alfred Adler. He escaped to France when the Nazis came to power. He worked for the French publishing house Calmann-Levy, and later turned to literature, writing in German and in French. His works include The Burned Bramble; The Abyss; Journey Without End; The Achilles Heel; and Man and His Deeds. He died in 1984.

  ANDRÉ STEIN is Professor of Human Communications at the University of Toronto. He is also a practicing psychotherapist with Holocaust survivors. He is the author of Broken Silence: Dialogues from the Edge; Quiet Heroes: True Stories of the Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Holland; and Hidden Children: Forgotten Survivors of the Holocaust.

  NECHAMA TEC is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of six books, including Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (winner of the International Anne Frank Special Recognition Prize); Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood; and When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland.

  JOSEPH TELUSHKIN is rabbi of the Synagogue of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles, and the author of Jewish Literacy and most recently of Words That Hurt, Words That Heal. He is coauthor with Dennis Pra
ger of The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism and Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism. He lives in New York City.

  TZVETAN TODOROV, born in Bulgaria in 1939, has lived in France since 1963. He is director of research at the Centre National de Recherches in Paris and has published many books on literature and society, among them Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps. An internationally renowned writer and critic, he has been a visiting professor at Columbia, Yale, and Berkeley.

  DESMOND TUTU was born in 1931 in Klerksdorp, South Africa, the son of a schoolteacher and a domestic worker. Ordained to the priesthood in Johannesburg in 1961, he was General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (sacc) from 1975 to 1985. During that time he built the sacc into an important institution in South African spiritual and political life and became internationally recognized as a leading voice against apartheid and for social justice and racial reconciliation. In 1984 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He was elected archbishop of Cape Town in 1986 and in 1987 was elected president of the All Africa Conference of Churches. He currently chairs South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

  ARTHUR WASKOW is a rabbi and a Pathfinder of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. He is the author of Godwrestling—Round 2, Seasons of Our Joy, and Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life, and coauthor of Tales of Tikkun.

  HARRY WU was imprisoned by the Chinese Communist government for nineteen years in a labor camp in Laogai. He now writes and lectures worldwide on slave labor camps from his headquarters in Oakland, California. His books, Laogai, Bitter Winds, and Troublemaker, expose the harsh conditions in his native China. Among the honors he has received are the China Democracy Honor Award, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights Award, the Peace Abbey Award, and the Hungary Freedom Fighter Federation Award.