In 1969, Simon Wiesenthal published The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, which recalled a dying Nazi soldier asking Wiesenthal’s forgiveness; the book included Wiesenthal’s own reflections and then a variety of responses to this encounter. Bernauer’s volume, Auschwitz & Absolution, self-consciously follows The Sunflower’s model. The case study here, however, is the story of Rudolf Höss, the former commandant of Auschwitz, requesting a Catholic priest. Father Władysław Lohn, a Polish Jesuit, heard Höss’s confession while he was in prison. Höss (the “commandant”) and Lohn (the “confessor”) met in April 1947, days before Höss was executed.

The book is split into two parts: Part 1 focuses on the confession and sets the stage for part 2, which focuses on commentaries on the theological, philosophical, and ethical issues raised by the confession. They are unevenly split and appropriately so: Part 1 has just two chapters whereas part 2 has sixteen chapters authored by seventeen different contributors, six of them Jesuits.

Following a preface and introduction, the two chapters of part 1 are put side by side in a way that suggests a confessional conversation. Chapter 1 begins with the opening words of the confessional rite: “Rudolf Höss, peace be with you …,” as if we are listening in to Lohn’s conversation with Höss himself. Then selections from Höss’s already published memoirFootnote ¹ are interspersed with occasional questions that Bernauer imagines as Lohn’s possible contributions. The chapter ends with the words of absolution (most strikingly, “I absolve thee from thy sins …”). Chapter 2 is an imagined diary of Lohn, although Bernauer’s introduction makes clear that Lohn said almost nothing publicly about the encounter. Based on the two explicit bits of evidence (one brief mention from archival records of Lohn’s Jesuit community in 1947 and one a written testimonial from a fellow Jesuit in 2021, reflecting on a sermon Lohn gave in 1958), Bernauer imagines Lohn wrestling with his role as confessor.

Höss’s memoir is difficult to read: He is only somewhat repentant, and at times his repentance is completely misplaced. (He expresses remorse for hurting the Polish people, never mentioning his crimes against the Jews.) And the imagined journals of Lohn are compellingly strange. Bernauer writes with the benefit of history, whereas I wondered if Lohn would have thought that the Catholic Church was complicit because of its long tradition of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, the so-called “teaching of contempt”? Or would that insight come only later after Vatican II, which Lohn did not live to see?

Part 2 contains the reflections of seventeen contributors from various social and academic locations, including historians, lawyers, philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, and scholars of religious studies and Jewish studies.

Most of the reflections circle around the same constellation of issues: confession, forgiveness, repentance, absolution, justice, mercy, memory, who has the right to forgive, what comprises true repentance, and so on. There is some agreement that Höss does not demonstrate repentance or deep confession; there are also questions about whether Lohn should have offered (or was even able to offer) absolution. These questions are also raised in Wiesenthal’s book, although Lohn and Höss’s case is potentially more arresting because Höss was the commandant of Auschwitz and not simply a Nazi soldier. Höss is surely responsible for more atrocities and should have demonstrated greater repentance.

This book would be helpful for theological libraries and any class concerned with the religious issues raised by violence and genocide. In a classroom setting, it would pair well with The Sunflower or Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in An Unapologetic World. Given the rise of authoritarianism across the world and its concomitant violence, anti-immigrant sentiment, antisemitism, and Islamophobia, Lohn and Höss’s encounter has resonances for today. What war crimes of our time will need to be faced? Whose repentance will we see? What will justice look like? And is there a way to prevent some of the worst atrocities from happening so we do not need more war crime tribunals?