The Kindly Ones полностью

I spent a few days in Cracow, to go to meetings and also to enjoy this beautiful city a little. I visited the old Jewish quarter, the Kasimierz, now occupied by haggard, sickly, and unkempt Poles, displaced by the Germanization of the Incorporated Territories. The synagogues hadn’t been destroyed: Frank, they said, wanted some material traces of Polish Judaism to survive, for the edification of future generations. Some served as warehouses, others remained closed; I had the two oldest ones opened for me, around the long Szeroka Square. The so-called Old Synagogue, which dated back to the fifteenth century, with its long crenellated-roof annex added for women in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century, served the Wehrmacht to store food supplies and spare parts; the brick façade, many times remodeled, the blocked windows, white limestone arches, and somewhat randomly set sandstone blocks had an almost Venetian charm, and owed much to the Italian architects working in Poland and Galicia. The Remuh Synagogue, at the other end of the square, was a small, narrow, sooty building of no architectural interest. But of the large Jewish cemetery surrounding it, which would certainly have been worth the trouble of visiting, nothing more remained but a vacant, desolate lot; the old gravestones had been taken away as construction material. The young officer from the Gestapostelle who accompanied me knew the history of Polish Judaism very well, and showed me where the grave of Rabbi Moses Isserles, a famous Talmudist, had been. “As soon as Prince Mieszko began to impose the Catholic faith on Poland, in the tenth century,” he explained, “the Jews appeared to sell salt, wheat, furs, wine. Since they made the kings richer, they obtained franchise after franchise. The people, at that time, were still pagan, healthy and unspoiled, apart from a few Orthodox Christians to the East. So the Jews helped Catholicism implant itself on Polish soil, and in exchange, Catholicism protected the Jews. Long after the conversion of the people, the Jews kept this position of agents of the powerful, helping the pan bleed the peasants by every means possible, serving them as bailiffs, usurers, holding all commerce firmly in their hands. Hence the persistence and strength of Polish anti-Semitism: for the Polish people, the Jew has always been an exploiter, and even if the Poles hate us profoundly, they still approve of our solution to the Jewish problem from the bottom of their hearts. That’s also true for the supporters of the Armia Krajowa, who are all Catholics and bigots, even if it’s a little less true for the Communist partisans, who are forced, sometimes against their will, to follow the Moscow Party line.”—“But the AK sold weapons to the Jews in Warsaw.”—“Their worst weapons, in ridiculous quantities, at exorbitant prices. According to our information, they agreed to sell them only on direct orders from London, where the Jews are manipulating their so-called government in exile.”—“And how many Jews are left now?”—“I don’t know the exact number. But I can assure you that before the end of the year all the ghettos will be liquidated. Aside from our camps and a handful of partisans, there won’t be any more Jews left in Poland. Then it will finally be time to look seriously into the Polish question. They too will have to submit to a major demographic diminution.”—“Total?”—“I don’t know about total. The economics departments are in the process of studying it and making calculations. But it will be sizeable: the overpopulation is far too important. Without that, this region can never prosper or flourish.”