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HEALING FROM DEPRESSION (6 OF 9)

by Scott Maze

Scripture: Psalm 38:1-22
This content is part of a series.


Healing from Depression (6 of 9)
Series: God Talk: A Conversation through the Psalms
Scott Maze
Psalm 38:1-22


Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005) was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineer and a Holocaust survivor. He became famous after WW II for his work to hunt down Nazi war criminals. In his book, The Sunflower, Wiesenthal describes an episode of his life toward the conclusion of WW II. It is 1943 and Wiesenthal is in Austria assigned to a work detail at the local military hospital, the same building that used to be his technical high school. While at the hospital a nurse takes him aside and asks him to follow her. She leads him to the room of a dying SS officer named Karl. The SS officer requested that a Jew be brought to him on his deathbed. Wiesenthal obviously did not know what to expect. What followed was a detailed, gruesome account of the officer's crimes against some Jewish civilians and his unending remorse after the fact. The Nazi officer was responsible for the destruction of a house where approximately 150 Jews had sought refuge. The SS officer confessed to destroying the 150 Jews inside the home by fire. Wiesenthal was prepared to jump up and leave at any moment. Yet, something keeps him at the dying man's bedside. He shoos a fly away from the SS officer's bandaged wound and holds his hand. At the end of the officer's confession, the Nazi officer asks for forgiveness. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal says nothing and simply walks away. What would you have done? That's the question Wiesenthal asks after he wrestled with his decision. He wondered, ''Did I do the right thing?'' In an attempt to find an answer to his question, he asks more than fifty prominent theologians, political leaders psychiatrists, human right activists, and Holocaust survivors of Bosnia and Cambodia. Yet, more than twenty-five of the world's leading opinion makers could not say whether Wiesenthal did the right thing. Approx ...

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