During the Second World War a young Jew, Simon, is struggling to stay alive in a German prison camp in Poland. His family have been murdered by the Nazis, he himself is starving and worked well-nigh to death, and day after day he watches his fellow inmates die. One day he is taken by the camp guards to the bedside of a patient in the local military hospital, a young S.S. officer who has suffered terrible burns in combat. The officer's head is completely bandaged over, but although he can't see, he can still speak and hear. He seems close to death, but is apparently determined to speak to Simon on his own, and dismisses everyone else from the room. The young Nazi then explains to Simon that he has something on his conscience – he was instrumental in the deliberate burning alive of hundreds of Jews, including women and children. He has demanded Simon's presence in order to ask for his forgiveness, precisely because Simon is Jewish. Simon sits in silence as he hears this story, and listens to the death-bed request for forgiveness from a man who has hideously tortured and killed innocents, and has knowingly furthered the Nazi project of genocide. After a time, Simon silently gets up and walks away, back to the guards and the camp (recounted by Simon Wiesenthal in The Sunflower, 25–55).