The Sunflower...Musings To The Self

What does the sunflower mean for Simon Wiesenthal? For me the image is very disturbing. How could God…allow a bright beautiful flower to grow on the grave of a despicable SS trooper? Why don’t these sunflowers wither and die like the rotting bodies they decorate? What an irony? In a way it could be seen by an observer as redeeming the evil that the body did in life, but how could such a disgusting debacle exist. The thought is sickening…Wiesenthal at least in the first part of the book suggests that the Sunflower seems to act as an axis mundi for these dead Nazi connecting them to life even in death, the butterflies swooping from grave to grave bringing messages to the dead that are transferred through the sunflower to the dead officer. Yet, how can it be right or good that such a connection exist, when as Wiesenthal believes that his people lie in mass graves that sunflowers will never grace. I am still unsure what the sunflower represents or what it means to Wiesenthal. All I can do so far is wonder if the old woman was right in claiming that God was on leave. How else could such an atrocity happen…even though it goes against everything I believe about God…