Geraldine Brooks Quote

This is called My Youth in Vienna. It's a very nice edition--an association copy, Schnitzler to his Latin master, one Johann Auer, 'with thanks for the Auerisms.' [...] Here he apologizes for writing so much on 'the so-called Jewish question.' But he says that no Jew, no matter how assimilated, was allowed to forget the fact of his birth. [...] 'Even if you managed to conduct yourself so that nothing showed, it was impossible to remain completely untouched; as for instance a person may not remain unconcerned whose skin has been anesthetized but who has to watch, with his eyes open, how it is scratched by an unclean knife, even cut until the blood flows.' [...] He wrote that in the early 1900s. The imagery is very chilling, is it not, in the light of what followed. . . .