過日子（北美旅遊篇）
輕吟淺酌過日子 合家歡樂夫妻子 平安健康一輩子
這是一次沉重的探索，讀過一些資料後，有幾分鬱悶，想不動筆了，卻又欲罷不能。
寫完了，發出了，心中的陰雲淡了許多。
有時候，我隻想在靜靜地思考一些問題，想在參與過程中長長見識，從而認識人性， 認識自我。
曆史在不同的時間不同的地點不同的民族重演過，此行的意義在於：
EACH OF US NEEDS TO LEARN WHAT HAPPENED,
HOW IT HAPPENED, SO IT NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN...
查閱許多的資料，而我覺得最有幸的是讀到了這篇文章：
Forgiveness in the Age of Forgetfulness
by Michael J. Rutledge
（http://www.westerncherokeenation.org/history_and_culture/forgive.shtml）
其中，讓我久久不能平靜的一段，摘錄到這兒
（事實上這是作者摘錄了 Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower) ：
......Reading Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower returned me to the question of forgiveness. Not far from forgiveness lay the question of forgetting. Forgetting and Forgiveness are not the same thing. I began to devote some thought to just what Americans were asking us to do, when they request us to forget the atrocities of the past.
Where Wiesenthal was a direct victim of the Nazi atrocities, I was not on the Trail of Tears, although it is with me each day. Where Wiesenthal was asked forgiveness by someone who actively participated in killing Jews, I am being asked to forget by the descendants of the murderers of my people.
Yet, the similarity of our situations are striking. Wiesenthal comments that even two years after the world discovered the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, Jews were encouraged to forget what happened. Even in 1946, the atrocities of the Nazis had overwhelmed the world as evidence was uncovered. "But ere long priests, philanthropists and philosophers implored the world to forgive the Nazis. . . . [They] found compassion for the murderers of innocent millions."6 In the face of the horrible truth, the world could not force itself to confront reality, so it attempted to forget it; to create a more pleasant fiction. It is remarkable that in only two years time, no German ever knew a Nazi.
Wiesenthal was asked by a young, dying Nazi SS officer to forgive him for a horrendous, bestial act against Jews. Wiesenthal listened to the man's confession, but said nothing to assuage the guilt of the dying SS officer. Instead, he left the room without saying a word. Wiesenthal's decision to not forgive troubled him thereafter. Several years after World War II ended, Wiesenthal looked up the SS officer's mother in Stuttgart.
Wiesenthal did not tell the SS officer's mother the truth of how he had come to know her son, Karl. Like any proud mother, she bragged about Karl to Simon. He was a "good boy." She told him of her husband who opposed the fascist regime. Many clues were available for Karl's mother, yet she remained in complicitous ignorance of what was going on around her. When at last she finds out Simon is Jewish, she quickly disavows responsibility for what happened. "In this district we always lived with the Jews in a very peaceful fashion. We are not responsible for their fate," she says.7 Wiesental responds:
Yes, that is what they all say now. And I can well believe it of you, but there are others from whom I won't take it. The question of Germany's guilt may never be settled. But one thing is certain: no German can shrug off the responsibility. Even if he has no personal guilt, he must share the shame of it. As a member of a guilty nation he cannot simply walk away like a passenger leaving a tramcar, whenever he chooses. It is the duty of Germans to find out who was guilty. And the non-guilty must dissociate themselves publicly from the guilty.8
Karl's mother expresses her disbelief at the stories that are surfacing about the slaughter of the Jews. In the end, she finally says, "I can well believe what people said -- so many dreadful things happened. But one thing is certain, Karl never did any wrong. He was always a decent young man."9 Wiesenthal left her with her image of her son intact.
