"In terms of our customary concepts," he shrugged, "it really can't be defined. It is a rank growth over the whole earth, sometimes advancing slowly, sometimes leaping ahead in great bounds. Everywhere it sucks voraciously at the lifeblood of the planet. What was in the beginning a swollen abundance will become in the end nothing but dried-up sap. Zionism is the visible, surface aspect. It is connected underground to the rest of the monstrous growth.

"And nowhere is there to be found a trace of opposition to this thing."

"One might say," I laughed, "that the wolves have split themselves into two packs. It has been agreed that one of these shall abandon the land of the sheep in order to go live somewhere, quite among themselves, as pure vegetarians."

"There is one thing above all of which we must always keep in mind," he tendered, "one thing of which we must always remind ourselves: 'Great masters of the lie'! One need only forget Schopenhauer's words for an instant in order to begin slipping under the influence of their deceptions. To be sure, we also lie but, in the first place, not as a matter of habit and, in the second place, clumsily. Any really experienced judge of human nature is able to detect the lie of an Aryan, even a very shrewd one. Sherlock Holmes himself, however, would be at a loss when confronted with the Jewish cold-bloodedness in deception. A Jew is only embarrassed when he inadvertently blurts out the truth. If he should happen to deliberately tell the truth, it is always with a mental reservation, thus making a lie even of the truth."

"Indeed, Luther," I replied, "said to the Jews: 'You are not a German, but a deceiver, not a Frenchman, but a faker.' [31] His synonym for Jew was 'liar'!"

That's what everyone who knows them says of them." he rejoined, "from the Pharaohs up to Goethe and our time. It has been said in every dead and living language: in Greek, Latin, Persian, Turkish, English, French, or what have you. One would hope that these universal condemnations, throughout the whole world, would give our charmers and wizards at least a little to think about. God forbid! Not even Christ was able to reach them. He stood there among the cringing Jewish rabble, his eyes flashing, the very image of scorn, and his words fell among them like whiplashes: Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it (John 8:44). But to our charmers and wizards that means no more than the unintelligible stammering of a child."

"They delude themselves by believing that to be only a stern but well-meaning lecture of the Lord to his beloved people of Israel," I underscored his irony.

"Christ," he continued with a raised voice, "was never other than perfectly straightforward and frank. God, not to feel the fact that there two fundamentally different worlds opposed one another! In Palestine after the Babylonian captivity there was a great lower stratum of non-Jews ruled over by Jewish moneylenders, powerful through their usury. One can read that in the book of Nehemiah. Sombart says that it leaves absolutely nothing to be desired in the way of clarity. [32] The outstanding point is that the real population, composed of oppressed peasants, was of an entirely different race than the Hebrews. Gradually the Jews forced their religion on them. Christ himself growled about that: 'Woe onto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye encompass sea and land to make one proselyte...' (Matthew 23:15).To the Jews, Galilee was the land of the Gentiles, whose population 'sat in darkness,' as they impudently imagined (Matthew 4:15-16). They said: Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?' and 'Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet' (John 1:46; 7:52). The Hebrews were so firmly convinced of the non-Jewish ancestry of Christ that they counted him among the especially hated Samaritans (John 7:48). We live and learn! There are many more such examples."

One could hardly recommend a better policy than that which lets each man find salvation in his own fashion," I stressed. "The tacit assumption in that policy, though, is that each man's fashion should involve some sort of decent sentiment, some genuine belief, and not just a contemptible Phariseeism. This distinction should have been expressly emphasized long ago. It wasn't, and the religion of the moneychanger has received the benefit of this misguided tolerance. Christ was not so tolerant. With a whip he put a stop to the business of the children of the devil, even though he had said, 'Love your enemy'!"

"Yes," he replied, "but we must understand what Christ meant by 'enemy.' We can love an honorable and decent enemy, even a brutal one, who is frank and forthright in his enmity. And at the same time we can beware of him. But Christ never dreamed that we should love men whom no love whatever could dissuade from their implacable determination to poison us, body and soul. Indeed, he himself did not do that. On the contrary, he continued to strike with his whip as hard as he could. And the words that he flung with indignation into the faces of the rabble breathed of irreconcilability itself. To me, he acted very proudly in the founding of his religion: there was very little contradiction between his sermons and his deeds! Why, then, have the 'pious' never followed his example? They least of all. They mercilessly persecute even their decent adversaries -- as a matter of fact, only their decent adversaries. Their eyes remain closed to the most cunning bunch of swindlers in existence. The Bavarian People's Party, for instance, knows quite well that we are defending the Christian foundations of our nation without mental reservations. They also know, however, that we can make no common cause with them as long as they adhere to their present policies. And so they turned to the Jews, hoping to remain in power with their help. They surprised themselves. Dripping with friendliness at first, the Jews turned on them murderously when they had gotten the upper hand."

"That was inevitable," I agreed with him. "Fortunately, the Jews would not be able to provide us with that same sort of dreadful experience, for we do not betray and murder our own flesh and blood for the sales of profit. So far as we are concerned, the Bavarian People's party could even remain in office, provided they clean the manure out of they pigsty and perceive the correctness of our views. We are not willing to tear ourselves apart just for power. But we want Germanism, we want genuine Christianity, we want order and propriety, and we want these things so firmly established that our children and grandchildren can remain satisfied with them."

"They consider that impossible," he said, "and therefore they consider our program nothing but empty phrases, of no more sincerity than the empty phrases with which they consciously try to peddle themselves to the people. But our goals are not only possible, they are certain, even if we don't attain them tomorrow. But first a beginning must be made. So far, never and nowhere has there been a truly social state. Everywhere and always the upper crust has leaned much more strongly to the principle, 'what is yours, is mine,' than to, 'what is mine, is yours.' These wise ones have only themselves to blame for the fact the lower stratum, full of rage, now is committing the same error. The Jew is able to take advantage of both these groups. One of them provides for his affairs, the other carries them out. Therefore, we oppose them both. We will put an end to unfair privileges as well as to slavery."

"Decidedly," I replied. "Our front stands against both left and right. A strange situation; from two directions we must ward off attackers who also fight one another. The Reds scream at us as reactionaries, and to the reactionaries we are Bolsheviks. From both sides the Jew directs the attack on us. The lower stratum doesn't see him yet and, thus, hates us from sheer stupidity; the upper stratum sees him but thinks it can serve its own selfish purposes with him and thus, shoots us in the back more from unscrupulousness than stupidity. One really needs a good deal of faith under such circumstances in order to maintain one's courage."

"Which we have, God be thanked, in a hundred ways," he said, laughing, as he stretched himself. "No words were spoken more directly to our hearts than 'Be not afraid'! (Matthew 28:10) And that was supposed to have been said by a Jew? Those creatures of eternal fear? Crazy!"

"Every time new and promising opportunities for meddling have arisen," he brought out, "the Jew has been immediately involved. He has demonstrated an uncanny ability to sniff out like a bloodhound anything which was dangerous to him. Having found it, he uses all his cunning to get at it, to divert it, to change its nature, or, at least, to deflect its point from its goal. Schopenhauer called the Jew 'the dregs of mankind,' 'a beast,' 'the great master of the lie.' How does the Jew respond? He establishes a Schopenhauer Society. Likewise, the Kant Society in his work, in spite of the fact that -- or, rather, because -- Kant summarily declared the Jewish people to be a 'nation of swindlers.' [33] The same with the Goethe Society. 'We tolerate no Jews among us,' said Goethe. 'Their religion permits them to rob non-Jews,' he wrote. 'This crafty race has one great principle: as long as order prevails, there is nothing to be gained,' he continued. He categorically emphasized: 'I refrain from all cooperation with Jews and their accomplices. [34] All in vain; the Jewish Goethe Society is still there. It would be there even if he himself had expressly forbidden such knavery."

"With exactly the same right," I interjected, "the two of us could join a Talmud Society. What impudence that would require! Inconceivable."

"Not to the Jew," he replied. "To him impudence has no meaning. He is only able to think in terms of advantage or disadvantage, profit or loss. One must approach him with a different sort of measuring stick."

"Our charmers and wizards," I rejoined, "all fall for their trick. Goethe, Kant, Schopenhauer seem to be nothing but babblers to them."

"Bah, Goethe!" he interrupted contemptuously. "Not even the saintly Thomas Aquinas is able to reach these people. The great father of the Church has described in his writings our relationship with the Jews in terms of a voyage on a ship. The Jews, embarked on the same vessel with the Christians, play a characteristic role: while the Christians are occupied with sailing the ship, the Jews plunder the storeroom and bore holes in the hull. St. Thomas recommends that they should be relieved of their booty and chained to the rudder. What an atrocity! How un-Christian! Poor Jews! One can learn so much from them! At least, according to Drs. Heim and Schweyer. And so the world goes on, governed with the same wisdom as in the time of Joseph's Pharaoh."

"Namely, by statesmen," I completed, "who are so busy ruling that they completely fail to notice that not they but others actually rule; by men like Czar Nicholas, who indulged himself in the same self-deception and got a bullet in the head for it. As early as 1843 Disraeli gave us a hint of what we should expect there. 'The mysterious Russian diplomacy is organized by Jews,' he boasted. Also, 'the mighty revolution which is in the making in Germany is evolving entirely under the leadership of Jews.'" [35]

"Most of our revolutions," he said, "whether initially with desirable goals or not, have evolved under Jewish leadership. The revolutions of vulgar predisposition were, for the most part, the work of Jews; and those with loftier tendencies were soon subverted into a darker course by Jews. In the case of the struggling young Christianity, for example, the Jews, quick as a flash, began hanging onto its coattails. Consider Paul, properly called Schaul, who was a rabbinical student. That Schaul first chose the Roman-sounding name, Saulus, and then had himself renamed Paulus gives cause for thought. Still more, the fact that in the beginning he persecuted the fledgling Christian community with first-rate ferocity. I don't know: mass murderers who later become saints is that not too much of a marvel? Indeed, the Jew Weininger supposed that Christ had also originally been a criminal. [36] But, my God, a Jew could say that a hundred times, and it still need not be true on that account.

"As a Jew, Paul certainly knew that of all the peoples of the world the Jews, first and foremost, needed their souls saved. 'Go not ... to the Gentiles, ... But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,' demanded Christ (Matthew 10:5-6). Paul ignored it. He went to the Greeks and the Romans and brought them his 'Christianity.' A 'Christianity' with which the Roman Empire became unhinged. 'All men are equal! Brotherhood! Pacifism! No more privileges!' And the Jew triumphed."

"I always think," I spun the thread further, "of the admirable Herr Levine in the Berliner Lokalanzeiger. [37] He suddenly burst out one day, as if in rapture: only a Jew could have done that; could have, with Paul's impudence, put himself in the middle of the Capitol and there expounded a doctrine which must bring about the utter ruin of the Roman Empire! That's what the man said, word for word; I still remember it perfectly."

"It certainly hits the nail on the head," he rejoined. "It may be a long time yet before Christianity recovers from Paul. Oh, what gullible souls we are! A Jew murders hundreds of Christians; suddenly he notices that the rest only become even more zealous; the well-known light dawns on him; he pretends to be converted, throws himself into the great pose, and behold: even though he deviates in nearly all his doctrines from the other apostles, we listen devoutly to his sermons. The simple teachings of the Master, which the most childlike mind might comprehend, we must have 'explained' to us by a Hebrew."

"The Jew," I replied, "certainly must be tempted to say, 'Why are you so stupid that you let everyone make fools of you?' And there are many charmers and wizards who, on account of his extraordinary cunning, or 'spirituality' as they call it, look upon him with timid admiration."

"If it depended on mere possessions," he returned, "they would be justified. Someone named Goldstein once boasted that the Jews administer the spiritual property of the German people. [38] A pity that he didn't add how they administer it.

"Well, let us be thankful that there will always be men who, for example, will read Goethe through the eyes of Goethe and not through the slimy spectacles of Goldstein. They may not be professors, but perhaps vagabonds of a sort. A breed, anyway, which will not become extinct and through which the original Goethe will be safely preserved. The Jews can then quietly 'administer' the new Goethe. It will not be begrudged them." [39]

"Suppose, however," I interjected anxiously, "the 'vagabonds' also listen credulously to them and fall into the trap?"

"It lies in the nature of the 'vagabond,'" he laughed, "to have a heart so full that it matters not how his head happens to be persuaded; it will always be his heart that determines the outcome. They feel intuitively that which the clever, despite their understanding, are not able to see. And they preserve it. One may deceive their heads, but not even they have authority over their spirits."

"And, you see," he pounded on the table, "they alone are to be thanked that at least part of our Christian heritage, as well as our other cultural legacy, has survived administration by the Jews. Where are they? Where were they? Among high and low, among the kings and the soldiers, among the popes and the mendicant friars, among the learned and the illiterate, everywhere. But not among the nothing-but-rich; but not among the nothing-but-clever; but not among the greedy and the insatiable; but not among the Pöbelvolk. Here the Jew is at home. Whatever appears here in the way of spiritual possessions he matter-of-factly administers; it is his own. Just as everything was transformed into gold for King Midas, every deep and meaningful word is turned into filth at his touch. But for the others, for the..."

"Vagabonds of the spirit," I threw to him.

"Everything remains as of old," he nodded. "There have been popes of Jewish blood. [40] Also there has seldom or never been a shortage of other dignitaries of the same descent in the Church. Was that which they stood for Catholicism? No, it was Judaism. Let's take just one thing: the selling of indulgences. The very essence of the Jewish spirit. We are both Catholics, but dare we not say that? Are we really supposed to believe that there has never been anything in the Church with which one can find fault? Just because we are Catholics, we say it. That has nothing to do with Catholicism. We know that Catholicism would have remained intact even if half the hierarchy had consisted of Jews. A number of sincere men always held it high, though often only secretly, many times even against the pope. Sometimes there were many such men, sometimes few.

"The investigation of the Jew and his activities should have been the alpha and the omega of our historians. Instead, they investigate the bowel movements of the past.

"Karl the Great favored the Jews at every turn. It seems to me that his slaughter of the 4500 Saxons at Verden -- the best German blood -- and his Jewish advisers had something to do with one another.

"The notorious insanity of the Crusades bled the German people of six million men. Finally the Hohenstaufen, Frederick II, succeeded through mere negotiation, without striking a blow in securing the Holy Land for Christendom. What did the curia do? Full of hatred, they hurled the ban of excommunication on Frederick and refused to recognize his treaty with the sultan, thus neutralizing his great success. It seems that, to those pulling the strings, the incidental bloodletting was more important than the avowed objective of the Crusades.

"At last came the Children's Crusade. Tens of thousands of children sent against the victorious Turkish army, all to be destroyed. I can't believe that the idea for that absurdity originated in a non-Jewish mind. I am always reminded of the murder of the children of Bethlehem and the slaughter of the Egyptian firstborn. I would give anything for a photograph of the priest who preached that Crusade, and his flunkeys.

"Giordano Bruno called the Jews 'such a pestilential, leprous, and publicly dangerous race that they deserved to be rooted out and destroyed even before their birth.' [41] This genial philosopher was burned at the stake. For his heresy? Opponents of the Church were swarming in Italy during his time, yet he, the most impartial of them, was seized." [Image: Giordano Bruno (1550?-1600)]

"Well, how about now?" I interrupted him. "In Russia one Catholic priest after another is tortured to death by the Jewish beast; hundreds have already been liquidated; the Church is taking its last gasp; but Rome cannot bring herself to call the child by its real name. Many times she has made a small start in that direction -- but only to be immediately squelched. Catholicism wants to speak; Jewry paralyzes its tongue."

"Rome," he replied, "will pull herself together, but only if we pull ourselves together first. And one day it can be said that the Church is whole again."

"Since those who are responsible for the trouble will have been discovered!" I cried. "Since the disguised Hebrew, together with his cuckoo eggs, will have been thrown out of the Christian community! He has set not only the Egyptians but also the Christians against one another so that 'they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor,' and he is still at this game. He works from the outside, carefully building his pitfalls and making his destructive influence felt in the press. But he also works from the inside, where he is even more dangerous, in the mask of the Christian minister. The Christian confessions swarm with Jewish and half-Jewish clergymen, the Protestant denominations even more so than the Catholic. They already feel so sure of victory in the Protestant churches that in Dresden a certain Pastor Wallfisch had the impudence to announce publicly: 'I am a Jew and will remain one; yes, now that I have learned the Christian beliefs I have become more than ever a true Israelite.' [42] And in Hamburg a preacher named Schwalb said: 'I consider myself a genuine Jew and have always considered myself thus'. [43] Where that sort of thing is possible, Christianity might as well let itself be buried.

"Luther's spirit seems to be completely played out among our Protestants. On the question of all questions, the Jewish question, they either hush him completely or try to tone him down. One of the most well meaning among their theologians, Professor Walther, calls Luther's attitude toward the Jews 'so offensive that it must arouse not only confused astonishment among Christians but also great indignation among Jews.' Those Christians with a confused astonishment wouldn't have found themselves in that state if they had not previously let themselves be confused by the Jews. And as for the great indignation of the Hebrews, we are not grieved a bit. Where, by the way, has that indignation been apparent? So far, Israel has been quiet as a mouse about it. They have always praised Luther greatly as the enemy of Rome. Heine began a ceremonious hymn of joy to the Reformer with the words, 'Luther, you dear man.'"

"He had good reason," he jeered. "All Jews have good reason to celebrate Luther and to ignore his anti-Semitism. Without intending to do so, he paved the way for them, and how! The more they extol his authority, the less the world notices his error. That he later cursed them as a pestilence is indeed bitter to them, but -- how many people are even aware of his condemnation of the Jews."

"The Jew Goldmann," I put in, "stated their reason plainly enough. 'Luther has again brought the Old Testament to honor.'" [44] [Image: Nahum Goldmann (1894-1982)]

"Instead of to dishonor," was the reply. "His translation to the German language might have been of some use; as it is, it has grievously damaged the German power of discernment. Lord in heaven, what a halo now surrounds Satan's 'Bible'! Luther's poetry sparkles so that even the incest of Lot's daughters has been given a religious shimmer. Jehova's command to be fruitful and multiply had to be obeyed by these two pious maidens -- at any price!"

Schopenhauer expressed a similar opinion," I confirmed. "He said that if one wants to understand the Old Testament one must read it in the Greek version. There it has an entirely different tone, an entirely different color, with no presentiment of Christianity! Contrasted with the Greek, Luther's translation seems 'pious'; also 'often erroneous, indeed, sometimes intentionally, and delivered throughout in a churchly, edifying tone.' Luther has permitted himself changes 'which one could call forgeries' and so on." [45]

"Not Luther," he raised his finger. "The rabbis who helped him with the entire translation introduced changes and forgeries. Hebrew is a difficult language. Luther translated a certain word, for example, as 'racial kinsman.' But then the rabbi came in and said that the word means 'neighbor.' And so we have the translation: 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' rather than, as it should be: 'Love thy racial kinsman as thyself.' A small piece of cunning, but -- it served its purpose of giving the Jews the aspect of real humanitarians."

"Yes, even Luther was taken in by the 'chosen people,'" I replied. "He looked upon the Old Testament as divine revelation. He approached the book with infatuation, convinced that it could contain nothing but sheer preciousness. Then he began wading into the vile thing. After a few steps he blinked his eyes, bewildered. He was stunned. That just couldn't be so! It must have some other meaning! And so, with perfectly honest intentions, he read between the lines what simply wasn't there. Everywhere he managed to see allusions to Christ, although nothing could be farther from the Jews' actual thoughts on the matter. Their Messiah is no 'lamb's tail,' Heine jeered at Christ, no scorner of earthly existence. [46] On the contrary, their Messiah is a brutal dog who will conquer the earth for his Jews; he is the 'prince of this world.' Page after page it says: 'Ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves,' or 'Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.' One of these is a statement of a 'divinely inspired' prophet, the other a 'deeply spiritual' psalm (Isaiah 61:6, Psalms 2:8).

"Credulously, Luther viewed everything in a rosy light. This became easier for him when, in the middle of the great morass, he came to passages like: 'Ye will have no permanent existence among the nations, and the soles of thy feet shall find no rest,' and 'Ye will be an abomination among all peoples.' Compassion seized him. "The Jews,' he thought to himself, 'have become untrue to their godly doctrine, but they will again find their way home to it.' It never occurred to him that these direly threatening sermons served only the purpose of holding the Jews to their course.

"On the other hand, many passages of apparently lofty stamp have quite a different purpose: namely, they serve as a protective cover. He later recognized this Jewish tactic, but only in the living Hebrews, not in their Bible. 'The Jews desire to make all their affairs ambiguous, so that nothing about them is really certain,' he said. If one belabors them for an especially low-minded passage, they can indignantly point at one which is dripping with loving kindness. Heine, for example, writes an utterly vulgar poem about Germany; five minutes later he is praising 'the dear homeland' to the skies. A matter of changing mood? Oh, dear God I suppose that we are to believe that an old street whore often finds herself in the mood to sing the 'Ave Maria,' or that a basically honest fellow is often in the mood to steal. What nonsense!"

"No, you are right," he said. "The Jew often plays the role of a benefactor only in order to accomplish his destructive aims without notice. It's always been that way.

"This ambiguity," I completed, "one finds even in Spinoza. One can hardly imagine a bolder, more outspoken world view than his; but his ethics would horrify a pig. 'In all things seek that which is advantageous' is the quintessence of his moral philosophy -- the genuine Jewish viewpoint." [Image: Baruch Spinoza, the greatest Jewish philosopher (1632-1677)]

"It is the most terrible tragedy," he said sadly, "that Luther bears the responsibility for such a dire development -- the consequence of deeds committed in perfect innocence -- that today all civilization is in danger of running aground on it. The greatest German the unsuspecting cause of the German collapse; Luther, the mighty opponent of the Jews, the one who most disastrously paved the way for them -- incomprehensible, I tell you, incomprehensible. To happen too late by a paltry ten or twenty years! To first become awake to the Jews shortly before his death, when everything had already been determined! [47] Previously, body and soul for the traitors! Then the Hebrews had still been 'cousins and brothers of our Lord' to him, while we Christians were only 'brother-in-law and strangers.' Wringing his hands, he entreated the populace to associate with them in a 'decent and proper' manner. To him they were exalted above the Apostles! The late Erzberger couldn't have carried on more absurdly. [48]

"Only not for an instant as sincerely," I stopped him. "If Luther had been a contemporary of Erzberger, he wouldn't have had to find out about the purpose of the Jewish hush-money first, in order to see through Judaism. As early as his student days he would have promptly leaped with both feet into the battle against the devil's brood."

"My God," he immediately resumed, "one cannot blame him. A lot has happened in the last four hundred years. But there is one thing to remember: popular instinct was more alert then than nowadays. All along the line mistrust of the Jews was quite firm. Luther was a man of the people, the son of simple folk. His predilection of many years toward the Jews is a bit misleading; one must take into account a certain naivete, a lack of worldliness, the result of his stay in the cloister. The same rule seems to have applied here as elsewhere: too much studying ruined his vision. Nevertheless, Luther was a great man, a giant. With a shock which pierced the twilight he saw the Jews as we have only begun to see them today. But, unfortunately, too late, and even then not there, where he had done the most damage -- in Christianity. Oh, had he only seen them there; had he only seen them in his youth! Then he would not have attacked Catholicism, but, rather, the Jews behind it! Instead of a wholesale condemnation of the Church, he would have let his whole, passionate impetus fall on the true villains. Instead of glorifying the Old Testament, he would have branded it as the arsenal of the Antichrist. And the Jew -- the Jew would have stood there in his abominable nakedness, as an eternal warning. He would have been obliged to get out of the Church, out of society, out of the halls of the princes, out of the castles of the knights and the houses of the citizens. For Luther had the strength and the courage and the overpowering will. It would never have come to the splitting of the Church or to the war which, in accordance with the wishes of the Hebrews, spilled Aryan blood in torrents for thirty long years."

"'And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother and every one against his neighbor,'" he ground out. "What hatred, what demonic hatred! That's not human; what is it?"

"That, my friend," I joked, "is the 'geniality of the heart' of which the Jew, Fritz Kahn, has spoken, through which 'Israel has become the ethical mother of mankind.' These fellows are really quaint in their impudence. Kahn has called Moses 'an almost unique phenomenon in the history of civilized peoples: a national hero without weapons.' At the same time he reproves us with the remark that 'on stormy nights the distressed wail of widows may be heard around the bronze heroes of our market places,' that is, around the statues of Prince Eugene, Marshal Blucher and so on. I wonder what he thinks Moses used to massacre the Egyptian firstborn, if not weapons. Gumdrops, perhaps? Or were they smothered to death from sheer love? Apparently, we are to believe that the Pöbelvolk consisted entirely of baby sitters and wet nurses.

"Well, all these fellows operate the same way at least. They don't even bother to deny anything; instead they flatly maintain exactly the opposite."

"That tactic seems to work quite well with our men of learning,' he growled. "The Jews say whatever they please; it is all gospel to our scholars. They wouldn't think of trying to verify anything; the fact that it appears in print is enough for them. A certain Jewess called the Talmud 'a grandiose, monumental work of the spirit,' a 'heroic monument of ideas, to which the millennia have given the breath of their experience.' [49] Immediately upon encountering such a gem, the German professor whips out his notebook -- and the next day his students have devoured and digested the new tidbit. That's the way it goes in our gymnasia. They are all designed, so they say, to turn out nothing but geniuses; instead, one lackey after another is graduated."

"A few hours spent browsing in the Talmud," I proceeded, "is quite sufficient to remove any doubt about the Jews. It is understandable that they have only the most inordinate praise for the book. When they peep into it their own peculiar nature peers back out at them. And that, of course, is the greatest source of joy for them. Thus, in essence, every Jew is a Talmudist, even if he has never looked at the Talmud. It makes no difference when it was written; in fact, it needn't have been written at all. The first Jew comprised all its essential ingredients. The Jewish leaders fully understand that, but they only say it metaphorically. 'The Talmud is an unimpeachable authority,' trumpeted the rabbi Dr. Gronemann, before a Hanover tribunal in 1894. 'The legal doctrines of the Talmud have precedence,' a Professor Cohen imperiously told a criminal court in Marburg in 1888. And he added -- now pay attention to this! -- that it applied also to non-believing Jews who, however, were nonetheless still a part of the Jewish community, 'since they acknowledge the moral doctrines of the Talmud.' A masterpiece! From time to time the fellows blurt out a real secret in their babbling, but we just don't pay attention. 'Whatever it is in the Talmud we acknowledge to have absolute precedence over the whole law of Moses,' a group of so-called reformed Jews testified in Paris in 1860, with the concurrence of the Alliance Israelite. And a rabbi, Dr. Rahmer, has written in Pierer's Encyclopaedia that the Schul Aruch, a kind of Talmud for home use, has been 'taken on by the Israelitisch community as an authoritative guide for religious practice.' Taken on? Such a wag! Pretty soon I'll be 'taking on' the features of Dietrich Eckart."

"Lord," he said, "whoever doesn't become sickened and nauseated upon making a closer acquaintance with the Talmud can put himself on display in a circus side show."

"The local side show," I remarked, "has certain limits on the degree of abnormality it will exhibit. The young student from Tubingen who could gulp down half-a-dozen toads with gusto has been its greatest attraction till now. No one, though, has a stomach capable of digesting even this one passage from the Talmud: "Rabbi Johanan said the penis of Rabbi Ishmael was as large as a six-kab [50] wineskin; according to others, three kabs. The penis of Rabbi Papa was as large as one of the baskets of the inhabitants of Harpania.' [51] The high-minded competitive zeal of the three old rabbis could knock an unprepared person off his chair."

"One finds a whole series of such pleasantries in this magnificent example of a religious book," he said disgustedly. "The real clincher, however, is that non-Jewish girls 'who are less than three years and one day old' are considered 'suitable' for rabbis, since Moses had written: 'But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves,' namely, for the rabbis.[52]

"The most abominable perversity and the most tedious syllable-thrashing in the same breath. What goes on within Jewish heads must really be frightful."

"They," I returned, "are of a contrary opinion on that. Otherwise their mirror image, the Talmud, wouldn't inform us that 'the Israelites are more pleasing before God than the angels,' [53] or that 'the world was created on behalf of the Israelites alone,' or that 'whoever slaps a Jew in the face has struck God himself,' or that 'the sun illuminates the earth and the rain makes it fertile only because Israelites live on it,' and more of the same sort of modesty."

"I really doubt that there is any sort of medical encyclopaedia which contains terms suitable for describing the Jewish megalomania," he said. "But what an incredible talent they have for disguising it!"

"Their book Sirach," I completed, "howls: 'Terrify all peoples; lift your hand up against strangers, that they may see your power. The fire of wrath must burn them. Crush the heads of the princes, who are our enemies!' (Sirach 36:2-12). And the Schulchan Aruch rages: 'Pour out, oh Lord, your fury over the goyim, who do not know you, and over the kingdoms which do not invoke your name. Pursue them in wrath and extinguish them beneath God's heaven!' (Schulchan Aruch, Orach Gaijim, 480). They make the same threat in both places, with the distinction that the Schulchan Aruch emphasizes that all must be exterminated who do not swear on Jehova."

"And with such an abominable moral doctrine on his conscience," he began to boil, "that marvel of modern Jewry, Moses Mendelssohn, [54] had the impudence to assert that 'dominion over the earth belongs by right to Jewry.' Because of their religion! As a trained Talmudist he certainly knew his way around in the whole, vile thing -- those extracts we have just quoted are only a tiny fraction -- but he still ... oh, this lying, this utterly mendacious pack, the very essence of the lie!"

"All Berlin," I said, "buzzed with praise for the 'wise', for the 'noble' Moses. But Goethe wasn't deceived: 'Jewish trivia!' was his comment on the pious trickery. It struck no one as odd that the incomparable Moses philosophized himself in the twinkling of an eye from a simple, private tutor to the powerfully wealthy founder of the banking house of Mendelssohn, thus avoiding by a wide detour the eye of the needle. This benefactor of mankind slyly promoted the idea that the Jewish people constitute a religious community only. Today this still constitutes a favorite nostrum of the Jews. A certain Dr. Ruppin has revealed why. 'Special laws against the Jews,' he tells us as he chuckles and rubs his hands together, 'have always been directed against the religious aspects of Jewry, since this sphere of activity provided the only easily conceivable target for legislation. Anti-Semitism, has never really been inimicable to the Jewish religion, but has been indifferent to it.' [55] So! We now have an admission that their 'religion' serves a very useful diversionary purpose. Anyone, however, who has become acquainted with it has found out that what the Jews call their religion coincides exactly with their character."

"That's what they themselves say," he said. "They are incessantly boasting, too, that their religion is such a masterful creation that it stands alone in the world. Then bring the Talmud forward! It contains the Jewish religion in its purest form -- theology, dogmatics, morality, everything together in the same place. Why do they hold back the magnificent book so nervously, if indeed 'the millennia have given the breath of its existence' to it? As born benefactors of mankind they should have long since made it accessible to the general populace. Instead, it still hasn't been completely translated, even today. And who in the devil has read what there is of it? One would think they are afraid some medieval church is still waiting to burn it for heresy.

"Some religion! This wallowing in filth, this hate, this malice, this arrogance, this hypocrisy, this pettifogging, this incitement to deceit and murder -- is that a religion? Then there has never been anyone more religious than the devil himself. It is the Jewish essence, the Jewish character, period!"

"Luther," I interjected, "expressed his opinion of it plainly enough. He urges us to burn the synagogues and Jewish schools and to heap earth on the remains 'so that no man would ever again see one stone or cinder of them.' God would forgive us for what we formerly had tolerated through our ignorance -- 'I hadn't known it myself,' he wrote -- but now that we were aware of what went on, we dared not, at any price, protect these buildings 'wherein they slander, curse, spit on, and revile both Christ and us.' We could hardly speak more strongly ourselves. He also urged the destruction of their houses, for they carried on there the same way as in their schools. 'Some may feel,' he complained, 'that my judgment is too harsh. It is, if anything, too lenient, for I have seen their writings.' [56]

"Our school inspectors apparently haven't seen them, nor have our charmers or wizards."

"Burning their synagogues, I am afraid, would have been of little avail," he shrugged. "Even if there had never been a synagogue, a Jewish school, an Old Testament, or a Talmud, the Jewish spirit would still have been there and had its effect. It has always been there. Every Jew ever born has embodied it. And that is even more pronounced with the so-called enlightened Jews. Heine belonged, certainly, among the most enlightened, but he had just as much insane arrogance as the greasiest Galician kike. Moses Mendelssohn passed for a downright wonder of wisdom. Yet, lo and behold, he found it actually shocking that the Jews still didn't have the dominion over the earth which was due them!" [57]

"From long years of experience," I brought out, "Dostoevski depicted the hair-raising conceit of the Russian Jew. [58] For a long time he lived with all kinds of convicts, including several Jews, sleeping on the same wooden bunks with them. Everyone treated these Jews in a friendly manner, he reported, not even taking offense at their raving-mad manner of praying. Probably their own religion had once been like that, thought the Russians to themselves, and they quietly let the Jews do as they pleased. But, on the other hand, the Jews haughtily rejected the Russians, didn't want to eat with them, and looked down on them. And where was this? In a Siberian prison! All over Russia Dostoevski found this antipathy and loathing of the Jews for the natives. Nowhere, however, did the Russian people resent their behavior, indulgently believing it to be a part of the Jewish religion." [Image: Feodor Dostoevski (1821-81)]

"Yes, indeed, and what a religion!" he said scornfully. "It is the character of a people which determines the nature of their religion, not the other way around."

"Dostoevski," I continued, "was compassion itself but, like Christ, he took exception to the Jews. With foreboding, he asked what would happen in Russia if ever the Jews should get the upper hand there. Would they even approximately give the natives the same rights they themselves enjoyed? Would they likewise allow them to pray in the manner they wished or would they not simply make slaves of them? Still worse, 'wouldn't they skin and fleece them?' Wouldn't they even exterminate them, as they had so often done with other peoples in their history?"

"Ah, could our workers but share his forebodings, particularly those who hope for salvation from the Soviets!" he cried. "Famine, mass graves, slavery, Jewish whips. Whoever goes on strike is hanged. 'Come hither, all ye who are weary and heavy laden.' How they whistle, the dogs! And how fine that sounds, in front of the curtain! Behind it, however, lurk the pampered 'Pöbelvolk' the Red Army, the dregs of non-Jewish humanity."

"The toll of Russians sacrificed since the beginning of Bolshevik domination is estimated by the authorities at about thirty million," I answered. "Those who weren't summarily executed fell to famine and disease. Were they all bourgeois? Only an imbecile could believe that. Who among us then has the most to suffer? The thousands who every day stand for long hours at their various occupations. Capitalists are hardly a majority among them. But that hasn't dawned on our workers. In their eagerness to be the masters, they let themselves be led about by the nose like children.

"Ebert [59] has thundered against capitalism his whole life. Now he is president. And? At every street corner banks sprout from the ground like mushrooms. That is certainly a fact. Everyone sees it. Anyone can reach out and touch it. But does that lead anyone to smell a rat? Not on your life!

"The first thing the Jew Eisner [60] did after the revolution was have the banks guarded by the army. Capitalists smuggled their enormous hordes of money out of the country for months, and he didn't raise a finger to stop them. He felt it was more important to travel to the Socialist Congress in Switzerland and there place the entire guilt for the world war on Germany. Do penance, he said, and the French will forgivingly clasp you to their hearts. Quite likely! Experience has gloriously confirmed it."

"The same Eisner," he nodded, "who, at the beginning of the war, sent a flood of telegrams to the other Social Democrat leaders, entreating them to remain true to the Kaiser. A disgraceful stab in the back must be avoided at all costs, said he. It went like that until the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. [61] Up till then all German Jews were inspired monarchists. But then came the about-face. The Moor had done his duty and crushed Czarist Russia; now for him to crush himself. The rest is silence. Visible to all eyes, the Jew also made his bid in Germany.

"Oh, workers! To let yourselves be thus deceived! Things are different than which innocents let themselves dream. The Communist Party in Germany still has fewer than a quarter of a million members; yet it owns over fifty newspapers. What that costs is simply incalculable. Millions. Who pays these enormous sums? We National Socialists have our hands full just keeping our one Beobachter [62] going. If we had an arrangement with the Jews, we would have a prodigious number of party newspapers in an instant. Are there comrades who doubt that? I'd like to meet one. And, look here, this is the incredible thing: they know that the Jews are secretly behind things, but they act as if it weren't so at all. Is that honest? Can that lead to a happy outcome? To rush to destruction unsuspectingly is one thing, but to do it knowingly and to single out one's grimmest enemy as an accomplice is another."

"I'd like to know," I remarked, "what the comrades would say if one proved to them in black and white that the Junkers or the big industrialists have had a secret moral philosophy of the most abominable sort since the time 'x'. Their rage would be unimaginable. 'Aha!' everyone would roar. 'With principles like that it is no wonder the devils torment us so! Imagine that! How can anyone be that mean and vile? The whole bunch of them should be exterminated!' They would carry on like that, as if possessed, and rightly so. But, on the other hand, when one shows them that the Jews have, in their official religious books, the most hair-raising statements about the plundering and murder of all Gentiles, it makes no difference at all to them. They either dispute it or, when that seems hopeless, say that most Jews haven't been that religious for a long time and don't concern themselves with that stuff anymore. It never occurs to them that the Jewish character is the source of their vile literature."

"But this," he said, "tops it all: all -- and I mean all -- social injustices of any significance in the world today can be traced back to the subterranean influence of the Jews. The workers seek, therefore, to eliminate with the help of the Jews those evils which none other than the Jews themselves have consciously and deliberately established. One can imagine what kind of help they will receive."

"Behold the modest Joseph!" I rejoined. "His influence on the Pharaoh caused the Egyptians dreadful distress, from which they later thought they would free themselves with the help of Moses. I must admit that the episode does not lack a certain grim humor."

"The truth," he said, "is, indeed, as you once wrote: one can only understand the Jew when one knows what his ultimate goal is. And that goal is, beyond world domination, the annihilation of the world. He must wear down all the rest of mankind, he persuades himself, in order to prepare a paradise on earth. He has made himself believe that only he is capable of this great task, and, considering his ideas of paradise, that is certainly so. But one sees, if only in the means which he employs, that he is secretly driven to something else. While he pretends to himself to be elevating mankind, he torments men to despair, to madness, to ruin. If a halt is not ordered, he will destroy all men. His nature compels him to that goal, even though he dimly realizes that he must thereby destroy himself. There is no other way for him; he must act thus. This realization of the unconditional dependence of his own existence upon that of his victims appears to me to be the main cause for his hatred. To be obliged to try and annihilate us with all his might, but at the same time to suspect that that must lead inevitably to his own ruin -- therein lies, if you will, the tragedy of Lucifer."

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