Mein Kampf
Only a knowledge of Jewry offers the key to a grasp of the inward, that is the real, intentions of Social Democracy.
If one knows this people, the veil of misconception about aim and meaning of the party fall from his eyes, and the ape-like face of Marxism rises grinning from the fog and mist of social talk.
Today I find it difficult, if not impossible, to say when the word “Jew” first gave rise to any special thoughts in my mind. I do not remember hearing the word so much as mentioned at home during my father’s lifetime. I think the old gentleman would have considered it uncultivated to emphasize the designation at all. In the course of his life he arrived at more or less cosmopolitan views, which had not only survived along with most extreme nationalist sentiments, but to some extent colored my feelings.
At school too there was nothing to change my inherited conception. I did meet a Jewish boy at the realschule, whom we all treated with caution, but only because his taciturnity led us to somewhat mistrust him, being somewhat the wiser for various experiences. Neither I nor the other boys thought much about this.
Not until I was fourteen or fifteen did I often encounter the word “Jew,” partly in connection with political talks. I felt a faint aversion to it, and could not help an unpleasant feeling which always came over me when I became involved in religious wrangles. But at that time I did not see the question in any other light.
Linz had but few Jews. In the course of centuries they had become outwardly Europeanized, and looked human; in fact I even thought they were Germans. The ridiculousness of this notion was not evident to me because I believed their only distinguishing mark was a different religion. That they should be persecuted on this account, as I supposed, often brought my aversion to hostile comments about them almost to the boiling-point.
62
