The Trolley Dilemma

If you were a prisoner in a concentration camp and a dying soldier is asking for your forgiveness, what would you do? In this situation it is a huge moral dilemma, it reminds me of the “trolley dilemma” where you can divert the trolley onto a track with one person or keep it on the track with many people on it (see attached image). To forgive and be judged by your peers, or deny a dying man forgiveness for his crimes is a lot like trying to decide which track your trolley will take. I found my answer through the sunflower, and the responses of Primo Levi, The Dalai Lama, Martin E Marty. My viewed position; as much as painful as it would be, is forgiveness. I come from a religious upbringing, I was always taught in sunday school that God forgives …show more content…
There have been genocides against Christians in history, but despite that the Holocaust was and still is a Jewish struggle and honestly forgiveness to an oppressor shouldn’t be given by someone like me who is not Jewish. Imagining what it would be like to live through a genocide, I don’t think I could run away from the soldier as Wiesenthal in The Sunflower without at least a yes or no answer. I still stand with my decision to give the dying man forgiveness. This is best described in Primo Levi’s response.
“You felt that you represented the entire jewish people… you would perhaps today be experiencing a deeper remorse than you feel at not having absolved him” (Levi 192).
He continues basically saying that by not forgiving you might feel guilty, but the man asking for forgiveness was out of his selfish, and childish fear of death which he had inflicted upon others. I agree with this but still feel like the guilt of knowing I didn’t forgive him would weigh down on me for a long