Book Club

Sun., March 14, 1999

Name: BBC Book Club

City: Coeur d’Alene

Group history: Club formed in January. Group has a core membership of 10, eight of whom attended the second meeting, which was held at Java, a coffee shop at Fourth and Sherman. Group is still evolving, but plans to read a mix of fiction and nonfiction. For further information, call (208) 664-8811.

Book reviewed: “The Sunflower” (Schocken Books, 289 pages, $13 paper ISBN 0-805-2106-01) by Simon Wiesenthal and others.

Group representative: Donna Patterson.

The review: Book is a collection of essays that examine the theme suggested by the book’s subtitle: “On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness.”

The lead essay is by Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, who is asked by a dying Nazi soldier to forgive him for his war crimes. “It was something that everyone wanted to read,” says Patterson. The consensus was that some of the later essays - by the likes of Harry Wu, Primo Levi and the Dalai Lama - make for difficult reading. “They were dry, academic works.” But Wiesenthal’s piece was, Patterson says, “an eye-opener.”

It was valuable, she says, “Just to read his story, and to be refreshed on the horrific part of that.” Further, weighing the philosophical implications of Wiesenthal’s ultimate decision was an exercise in the meaning of forgiveness. “I wouldn’t have forgiven him,” Patterson said.

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