Is vengeance or forgiveness more effective?

In the story “The Watch”, we read about a man who is a survivor of the holocaust, and falls victim of the loss of friends, and family. Before the attack he buries a watch in a box in the ground. 20 years later he goes back and uncovers the watch, but re-buries it. In the story he says that he wanted to turn the watch into “instrument of delayed vengeance” . By this he may have meant that he wanted people to see this watch in another 20 years and see what the jews had to do in order to survive the Nazi’s wrath. I think that vengeance is more effective when you want an immediate response, but in the end, forgiveness is the way to go. you cannot get a complete change when you are violent all the time. All it does is create short term change, not a long term transformation. In the beginning of the story he stated that “Yes we were naïve,” but I think he knew inside what was going on inside.