'Any Member of the Alien Tribe'

Horror soon becomes old hat. Only when I saw the ages of the victims in Pittsburgh did it flare into my awareness. That’s a shameful admission. The cruel, needless killing of any innocent is a crime, but the thought of old people at worship murdered for their faith defies any understanding of evil I possess. Here is Nadezhda Mandelstam in Hope Abandoned (trans. Max Hayward, 1974):

“A remarkable thing about the Jews is that, apart from suffering the lot of their own people, they also have to share the misfortunes of those in whose country they have put up their tents. Even a Jew who publicly renounces his Jewishness still goes to the gas chambers with the others, or is sent to Kolyma, like any member of the alien tribe whose language he speaks.”

We’re all vulnerable; Jews, more so.

[Read John Podhoretz's column on the killings.]