Joseph Roth - The Wandering Jews

In the attempt to reach that ledge where, under certain circumstances, aristocrats, Christian industrialists, and Jewish financiers were prepared to claim that they were all equal, and emphasized their equality so vociferously that no sensitive ear could fail to grasp that what they were really emphasizing was their inequality, the German Jew tossed his coreligionists the occasional sop, so as not to be hindered in his personal ascent. Giving a sop to strangers is perhaps the meanest form of hospitality, but it is hospitality nonetheless. There were some German Jews — and one of their representatives is today languishing in a concentration camp — who not only imagined that everything would be fine but for the arrival of Jews from the East, but who actually helped sic the plebeian bailiff on the helpless strangers, as one sets a dog on a tramp. But when the bailiff took power, and the janitor took over the “state apartments,” and the guard dogs broke free, then the German Jew was forced to see that he was more exposed and more homeless even than his cousin in Lodz had been a few years before. The German Jew had grown arrogant. He had lost the God of his fathers and acquired an idol instead: the idol of a civilizatory patriotism. But God had not forgotten him. And he sent him on his wanderings, a tribulation that is appropriate to Jews, and to all others besides. Lest we forget that nothing in this world endures, not even a home; and that our life is short, shorter even than the life of the elephant, the crocodile, and the crow. Even parrots outlive us.

2.

It seems I must now defend German Jews against their cousins from Lodz, just as I attempted previously to defend the Lodz cousins against attacks by the Germans. In a way the German Jew is even worse off than the Eastern Jew. He has forgotten how to wander, how to suffer, and how to pray. All he knows is how to work — which is what he is not allowed to do. Of the six hundred thousand German Jews, some one hundred thousand or so have emigrated. The majority of those remaining are unable to find work. They are not even allowed to look for it. Their passports expire and become invalid. And a human life nowadays hangs from a passport as it once used to hang by the fabled thread. The scissors once wielded by the Fates have come into the possession of consulates, embassies, and plainclothesmen. No one loves victims, not even their fellow victims. At most they are loved by holy and devout people, who are as despised in this vulgarized world as the Jews are. Where can they go? With his senses sharpened by despair, the emigrant can hear the inaudible call to him from every border: “Die miserably where you are!”

Émigré German Jews are like a new tribe: Having forgotten how to be Jews, they are learning it all over again. They are unable to forget that they are German, and they can’t lose their Germanness. They are like snails with two shells on their backs. Abroad, even overseas, they appear German. It’s difficult for them to deny, if they are to be truthful. Oh — the whole world thinks in such tired, worn, traditional clichés. It never asks the wanderer where he’s going, only ever where he’s come from. And what matters to the wanderer is his destination, not his point of departure.

3.

When a catastrophe occurs, people at hand are shocked into helpfulness. Certainly, acute catastrophes have that effect. It seems that people expect catastrophes to be brief. But chronic catastrophes are so unpalatable to neighbors that they gradually become indifferent to them and their victims, if not downright impatient. The sense of order, regularity, and due process is so deeply ingrained in people that they are only willing to entertain the opposite— emergency, madness, chaos, confusion — for a brief period. Once the emergency becomes protracted, helping hands return to pockets, the fires of compassion cool down. People become inured to their own misfortunes, so why not the misfortunes of their neighbors and, in particular, the misfortunes of the Jews?

Plenty of welfare committees have been dissolved, voluntarily or otherwise. A few generous philanthropists are hardly in a position to cope with mass distress. Every European country has stopped taking in so-called “intellectual” émigrés, and so have their colonies. Palestine, as everyone knows, has been able to take in no more than a few thousand. Many return from places like Argentina, Brazil, and Australia after only a short time. The various countries proved unable to keep the promises the committees made on their behalf. I don’t know what sort of shape the people are in who are still there: By which I mean I don’t know if they’re alive or dead. From time to time an individual may get through: That’s the law of nature. The world hasn’t helped much, not even out of expediency. But then, how could one have looked to a world like this for help?

4.

In such a world, not only is it out of the question that émigrés should be offered bread and work but it is taken for granted. It has also become out of the question for them to be issued so-called papers. And what is a man without papers? Rather less, let me tell you, than papers without a man! The so-called Nansen passport† that Russian émigrés were furnished after the Revolution, and which, incidentally, failed to secure them freedom of movement, is not even a possibility for German émigrés. The League of Nations now has a department — with a British high commissioner in charge of it — which is responsible for regulating the official status of German émigrés. But we know all about the League of Nations— its turgid bureaucracy and the golden shackles that its best-intentioned commissioners wear. The only country that so far has issued valid papers to German émigrés is France, although these again do not offer proper free dom of movement for those who hold them. Even these papers, however, were only made available to a limited number of émigrés, who had entered France before a certain date— and even then, only under certain conditions. It is difficult, if not impossible, to get even this legal document stamped with the visa of any other country. Italy, Poland, Lithuania, even England, are all reluctant to admit stateless travelers. In effect, only “prominent” refugees are able to travel on them — Jewish journalists, newspaper publishers, film actors, or directors: people who are well acquainted with the ambassadors and consuls. How will a poor Jewish tailor ever get into the visa department of a consulate or an embassy? It’s almost a metaphysical affliction: You’re a transient and you’re stuck; a refugee and a detainee; condemned to rootlessness and unable to budge. And even for such tender mercies, you owe thanks to the Almighty, and in particular, to the police.

In some of the most civilized nations of Europe, the local animal protection societies organize curious airborne expeditions: They collect migrating birds that for one reason or another were left behind by their fellows in the autumn. They put them in cages and fly them to Italy— where they are shot down and eaten by an enthusiastic population. Is there a comparable society for the protection of humans, one prepared to take our fellow beings, those without passports and visas, to the land of their heart’s desire? Are five thousand swallows, who stayed behind for some unknown and unknowable natural reason, worth more than fifty thousand human beings? A bird doesn’t need a ticket, a passport, a visa — and a human being gets put away because he’s short of just one of those items? Do people feel more compassion toward birds than toward other people? Cruelty to animals is punished, yet cruelty to humans brings promotion. Just like migrating birds — though without quite the same imperative — they too are periodically shipped north or south in airplanes. No wonder that animal welfare groups enjoy more popularity in every country, and with every level of the people, than does the League of Nations.