The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

He noticed the way I flinched. “Fine feelings nowadays are a luxury we can't afford.
Neither you nor I.”
“Arthur,” I repeated, “I don't want to go back to the hospital.”
“If they send you there, you'll have to go: there's nothing you can do. Many will be only
too pleased not to stay in the camp all day.” Arthur still seemed unable to understand me.
“I haven't told you about the people in the streets. I don't want to see any of them any
more. And they mustn't see me either. I don't want their sympathy.”
Arthur gave up. He turned round in his bunk and went to sleep. I tried to keep awake. I
feared the dream would return. But then I suddenly saw the men in the street. And I realized
that the break with the world around us was now complete. They did not like us Jews—and
that was no new thing. Our fathers had crept out of the confines of the ghetto into the open
world. They had worked hard and done all they could to be recognized by their fellow
creatures. But it was all in vain. If the Jews shut themselves away from the rest of the world
they were foreign bodies. If they left their own world and conformed, then they were
undesirable immigrants to be hated and rejected. Even in my youth I realized that I had been
born a second-class citizen.
A wise man once said that the Jews were the salt of the earth. But the Poles thought that
their land had been ruined by over-salting. Compared with Jews in other countries,
therefore, we were perhaps better prepared for what the Nazis had in store for us. And
perhaps we were thereby made more resistant.
From birth onward we had lived with the Poles, grown up with them, gone to school with
them, but nevertheless to them we were always foreigners. A bridge of mutual understanding
between a Jew and a non-Jew was a rarity. And nothing had changed in that respect, even