In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel Read Free Book Online Page B

doctors quickly found themselves without jobs. Many Viennese simply took possession of Jewish homes and belongings. Thus, as Tina Walzer and Stephen Templ’s systematic study of the period has revealed, a “large number of lawyers, judges, and physicians improved their living standards in 1938 by plundering their Jewish neighbors. The success of many Austrians today is based on the money and property stolen sixty years ago.”
    Another reason for the dissociation of cultural and moral values was the move from a cultural to a racial form of anti-Semitism. Cultural anti-Semitism is based on the idea of “Jewishness” as a religious or cultural tradition that is acquired through learning, through distinctive traditions and education. This form of anti-Semitism attributes to Jews certain unattractive psychological and social characteristics that are acquired through acculturation, such as a profound interest in making money. However, it also holds that as long as Jewish identity is acquired through upbringing in a Jewish home, these characteristics can be undone by education or religious conversion, in which case the Jew overcomes the Jew in himself or herself. A Jew who converts to Catholicism can, in principle, be as good as any other Catholic.
    Racial anti-Semitism, on the other hand, is thought to have its origins in the belief that Jews as a race are genetically different from other races. This idea derives from the Doctrine of Deicide, which was long taught by the Roman Catholic Church. As Frederick Schweitzer, a Catholic historian of Jews, has argued, this doctrine gave rise to the popular belief that the Jews killed Christ, a view not renounced by the Catholic Church until recently. According to Schweitzer, this doctrine argued that the Jewish perpetrators of deicide were a race so innately lacking in humanity that they must be genetically different, subhuman. One therefore could remove them from the other human races without compunction. Racial anti-Semitism was evidenced in the Spanish Inquisition of the 1400s and was adopted in the 1870s by some of Austria’s (and Germany’s) intellectuals, including Georg von Schönerer, leader of the Pan-German nationalists in Austria, and by Karl Lueger, the mayor of Vienna. Although racial anti-Semitism had not been a dominant force in Vienna before 1938, it became official public policy after March of that year.
    Once racial anti-Semitism replaced cultural anti-Semitism, no Jew could ever become a “true” Austrian. Conversion—that is to say, religious conversion—was no longer possible. The only solution to the Jewish question was expulsion or elimination of the Jews.
     
     
    MY BROTHER AND I LEFT FOR BRUSSELS BY TRAIN IN APRIL 1939. Leaving my parents behind when I was only nine years old was deeply distressing, despite our father’s persistent optimism and our mother’s calm reassurances. As we reached the border between Germany and Belgium, the train stopped for a brief time and German customs officers came on board. They demanded to see any jewelry or other valuables we might have. Ludwig and I had been forewarned of this request by a young woman who was traveling with us. I had therefore hidden in my pocket a small gold ring with my initials on it, which I had been given as a present on my seventh birthday. My normal anxiety in the presence of Nazi officers reached almost unbearable heights as they boarded the train, and I feared that they would discover the ring. Fortunately, they paid little attention to me and allowed me to quake undisturbed.
    In Brussels, we stayed with Aunt Minna and Uncle Srul. With their substantial financial resources, they had succeeded in purchasing a visa that allowed them to enter Belgium and settle in Brussels. They were to join us in New York a few months later. From Brussels, Ludwig and I went by train to Antwerp, where we boarded the S.S. Gerolstein of the Holland-American Line for the ten-day journey that took us to Hoboken, New