Simone Veil

Monsieur,

Let me express all my gratefulness for "Les Fleurs de Soleil" you were kind enough to send me. I read it straightaway with great emotion.

What seems to me really meaningful is that you, who dedicate yourself to the research of war criminals in order to be condemned, put forward the case of conscience of forgiveness for those who show repentance.

After having read your book I questioned myself and found it almost impossible to imagine being in the stead of a deportee listening to the confession of an SS. Nobody can judge nor even know what attitude he would have had in the stead of the author. Was he, as a matter of fact, free to forgive the dead? Didn't he risk to be victim of his own emotion? I have often thought that it was easy to accept even to forget what we went through but the victims required from us to remember. You have proved that more than anyone.

However, you had mercy on the mother and let her live with her sorrow, one that at least let her have the unchanged memory of his son. Thus you gave up useless and unjust vengeance, and that I think is important.

Please accept, Monsieur, my feeling of fidelity in the same remembrance of the past.

[not signed]