Antisemitism -- Fiction; Jews -- Austria -- Fiction; Middle class -- Fiction; Vienna (Austria) -- Fiction
"What is always on their lips?"
Heinrich smiled. "You must know the story of the Polish Jew who was
sitting in a railway compartment with an unknown man and behaved very
conventionally--until he realised by some remark of the other's that
he was a Jew too, and on the strength of it immediately proceeded to
stretch out his legs on the seat opposite with an 'ä soi' of relief."
"Quite good," said George.
"It is more than that," explained Heinrich sternly, "it is deep; like
so many other Jewish stories it gives a bird's-eye view into the
tragi-comedy of present-day Judaism. It expresses the eternal truth
that no Jew has any real respect for his fellow Jew, never. As little
as prisoners in a hostile country have any real respect for each other,
particularly when they are hopeless. Envy, hate, yes frequently,
admiration, even love; all that there can be between them, but never
respect, for the play of all their emotional life takes place in an
atmosphere of familiarity, so to speak, in which respect cannot help
being stifled."
"Do you know what I think?" remarked George. "That you are a more
bitter Anti-Semite than most of the Christians I know."
"Do you think so?" he laughed; "but not a real one. Only the man who
is really angry at the bottom of his heart at the Jews' good qualities
and does everything he can to bring about the further development of
their bad ones is a real Anti-Semite. But you are right up to a certain
point, but I must finish by confessing that I am also an Anti-Aryan.
Every race as such is naturally repulsive, only the individual manages
at times to reconcile himself to the repulsive elements in his race by
reason of his own personal qualities. But I will not deny that I am
particularly sensitive to the faults of Jews. Probably the only reason
is that I, like all others--we Jews, I mean--have been systematically
educated up to this sensitiveness. We have been egged on from our
youth to look upon Jewish peculiarities as particularly grotesque
or repulsive, though we have not been so with regard to the equally
grotesque and repulsive peculiarities of other people. I will not
disguise it--if a Jew shows bad form in my presence, or behaves in a
ridiculous manner, I have often so painful a sensation that I should
like to sink into the earth. It is like a kind of shame that perhaps is
akin to the shame of a brother who sees his sister undressing. Perhaps
the whole thing is egoism too. One gets embittered at being always made
responsible for other people's faults, and always being made to pay the
penalty for every crime, for every lapse from good taste, for every
indiscretion for which every Jew is responsible throughout the whole
world. That of course easily makes one unjust, but those are touches
of nervousness and sensitiveness, nothing more. Then one pulls oneself
together again. That cannot be called Anti-Semitism. But there are Jews
whom I really hate, hate as Jews. Those are the people who act before
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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