We weren’t really Jewish, not like the émigrés who’d flooded into Austria during the Great War and again in the bleak, impoverished days that followed our defeat. Those Eastern Jews, the Ostjuden, lived apart from the rest of Austrian society, holding fast to their orthodox beliefs and practices. I didn’t even know any like that, who dressed in the traditional garb. The few religious Jews I knew in our neighborhood, those who kept Sabbath or displayed menorahs or mezuzahs in their homes, did so quietly, not with the bold insouciance of the Ostjuden, and they looked like everyone else. And my
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