ABSTRACT
soon after the nazis came to power in January 1933, I began to hate myself for being a Jew. I had been aware as long I could remember that the goyim hated us, but this had merely instilled the fear of being maimed or killed by the anti-Semites. I had not yet worked out the rational inference that there must be something terribly wrong with us Jews to evoke so much hatred. But I saw my oppressors’ point once I became an avid reader of Julius Streicher’s anti-Semitic weekly, Der Stürmer, whose grotesque and obscene cartoons of my coreligionists were posted in glass-enclosed display boxes on the Hohenzollernplatz for outreach to any benighted Jew-lovers. I became convinced that we Jews really are awful people. So I tried to conceal my shameful membership in the Children of Israel and pass as an ordinary anti-Semite. I didn’t yet know at the time that in turning toward self-hatred I merely followed in the footsteps of many of my renowned fellow German Jews, such as Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Gustav Mahler, Walther Rathenau, Fritz Haber, and Kurt Tucholsky.
