How can one forgive after a tragedy?

Forgiveness is not easy. It’s a process that requires an individual or a community to let go of resentment towards someone who has done them wrong. In “The Watch” by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist is a survivor of the Holocaust who has come back to his hometown 20 years after the war to retrieve a watch he had buried before the war.  The watch that was given to him for his 15th birthday for Bar Mitzva and it “was meant to remind each boy that henceforth he would be held responsible for his acts”(pg1), symbolizing his pathway to manhood. The protagonist is very attached to the watch and has strong desires to see his watch again as he believes it represents his life as a survivor of a holocaust, “see if it is still there in the same spot, and if defying all laws of probability, it has survived–like me”(pg2). When he found it, the watch was dirty and was crawling with worms. The protagonist was about to keep the watch but to the readers surprise, he ended up reburying it back into the ground. The man was able to forgive and let go of the past, although still having the watch serves as a monument to what he had lost and also have the town recognize the atrocity of the war, “i wanted to transform my watch into an instrument of delayed vengeance”(pg5), hoping generations from now, someone would find the watch and be reminded that there used to be many Jewish kids who were robbed from their future. The protagonist forgave but forgiveness is not just about letting someone off scot-free; he wanted to remind the people how the war has affected the Jewish community and the wrongdoings of the Nazi’s should never be forgotten. Although the watch did have a lot of significance to his childhood and past, he was able to let go of this one item that meant a lot to him and forgave the past. The town of his childhood that is remained has now “become the face of the watch”(pg5) whereas if he kept it, the town would cease to be just another town.

The picture I chose is one of my favorite historical pictures of all time called “Flower Power”. In the picture, you can see a protester putting a flower in the policeman’s gun. A flower is to symbolize peace and forgiveness. Instead of fighting back with violence, the protester is showing the police with the flower, and the world, that they are not associated with anger and that they are forgiving them with their peace.