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T H E SOU T HERN ISRAELITE
II
The Ch osen People
The Tragedies Of Jewish Superiority And Inferiority
By JACOB WASSERMANN
Outstanding German Jewish Novelist
Author of World s Illusion, Wedlock. Caspar Hauser,” etc.
Mv friend’s circumstances in Zuerich
were straitened; having quarreled
his employer he had been forced to
, aw his position, and had found no other
vet. Our mode of life was as follows:
We* slept all day in his room, and in the
evenings went to a cafe where a friendly
waiter granted us credit. There we drank
coffee with milk and ate a stupendous
number of rolls—our only meal in the
twenty-four hours. At this cafe we stayed
and talked until late at night; then we
went home, my friend got into bed and I
lay down on a borrowed mattress, and we
continued talking until the morning
dawned.
The Freiburg incident was a constant
torment to me. My friend noticed that I
was keeping something from him, for I
had not been able to bring myself to tell
him about it, but had explained my flight
as due to some unimportant dispute.
With delicate tact he finally managed
to make me divulge my secret, and
thereafter many of our nocturnal con
versation centered about this theme.
That intrinsically minor incident
brought us to generalizations and dis
cussions of life as a whole and then
back again to the strictly personal
"ubject of my own existence. And
after we had traveled many such
roads together a gulf suddenly ap
peared between us.
I confessed to him something to
which I could not reconcile myself,
omething which I had always re
vised to admit to myself: I felt as a
member of a nation, equal to others
in human status and civic rights. But
any one could, without adequate
reason and without laying himself
'pen to condemnation, treat me as a
feature of a lower order—then either
I y sentiment was based on error, or
understanding which had seemed
support that sentiment was falla-
ious and deceptive.
He replied that hostility was direct-
not against me but against my
II e, against my identification with
foreign body within the nation. I
•as prepared to hear this argument,
lt c ould not answer it without feel-
K a sense of shame and indignation.
Granted, I said, that these strangers are
' ur guests—why do you trample upon
fhe laws of hospitality, which are also
' laws of humanity? And if we assume
;at y° u regard them as annoying intru-
^why do you tolerate them and com-
Uie hypocricy of making humane
ac , ts • Better open welfare than this living
n der the same roof in sham peace and
idden hate.
W ell, was his mystifying comment, the
s are a part of us; however things are,
uie y are a part of us.
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No other essay by Jacob Wassermann
delves so deeply into the inner recesses of
the tragedy of the Jewish soul. In this
hitherto unpublished chapter of his diary,
Wassermann tells of his discussions with a
Christian friend, with whom he took refuge
in Zurich, when, as a young man, he lost
his position in Frieburg because his em
ployer discovered that he was a Jew.
(This is the Frieburg incident referred to
in these reminiscences.) Wassermann’s
analysis of the “division” between German
and Jew is strangely timely—although it
refers to the pre-war status of the Jew in
Germany.
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I protested. They are a part of you, and
yet you treat them like rats, like para
sites?
He replied: Who would think of such a
thing? Only political and social mischief-
makers do that. Enlightened Germans
JERUSALEM TYPE
know what they owe the Jews and that
the future will only increase their debt to
the Jews.
Jews and Germans—I could not grasp
this division, nor could I forget it; I
thought about it long and strenuously in
order to make it clear to myself. I asked:
What is the dividing factor? The difference
in faith? But I am not a believer in the
Jewish faith, just as you are no believing
Christian. The difference in blood? But
who is competent to judge blood? German
blood has been mixed with that of French
immigrants, with that of Slavs and Norse
men and Spaniards and Italians, probably
also with the blood of the Huns and Mon
gols when their hordes invaded German
territory. Excellent, exemplary Germans of
definite non-German descent might be
named—artists and generals, poets and
scholars, princes and even kings. Can the
two thousand years of the Jews’ life in the
West have failed to modify their blood?
Though it be alien blood have not the air
and the soil and the water, history and a
common destiny, action and work in com
mon had their effect, even if we exclude
actual physical interbreeding? Despite
their own laws and the resistance of the
nations they could not escape the natural
law. Or are they of a different moral con
stitution, human beings of another cast?
That might be so, he answered. To him
they seemed to be of a different moral con
stitution, human beings of another
cast. Perhaps this was the critical
point.
Thereupon I: Surely he did not
mean that the insurance agent of
Freiburg had not been impelled by a
petty, malicious and mischievous prej
udice?
No, he did not mean that. But what
happens on a lower plane is no crite
rion whereby to judge the views held
on a higher. Just as a legislature can
not be held responsible for trespass
ing on the part of the executive
power.
He felt, therefore, that my moral
constitution differed from his, that I
was a human being of another cast?
Instead of replying he asked me,
very seriously and solemnly, whether
—word of honor—I really felt as a
Jew. I hesitated. I wanted to know
the purpose of the question.
He laughed, saying he could clearly
see my difficulty in placing myself.
The concept “Jew” was not easy to
define.
Of course, I rejoined. No easier
than the concept “German”.
He wanted to know whether there
was any doubt as to my mother’s hav
ing been Jewish, and whether any
case of racial mixture, or even the
suspicion of it, had ever occurred in
my family. When, smiling I answered both
questions in the negative he shook his head
and observed that my case was extraordi
narily interesting—a most unusual case.
I insisted upon his explaining what he
meant by “my case”. I tried to help him by
saying: The fact that among Germans I
feel as a German is of no final significance.
The German is at liberty to regard this as
effrontery or otherwise, to accept me or
not. When he accepts me it is condescend
ingly, by way of exception, often only tem
porarily, because (Please turn to page 28)