Address Unknown

by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor

But there is another realm where we can always find something true, the fireside of a friend, where we shed our little conceits and find warmth and understanding, where small selfishnesses are impossible and where wine and books and talk give a different meaning to existence. There we have made something that no falseness can touch. We are at home.

A leader is found! Yet cautiously to myself I ask, a leader to where? Despair overthrown often turns us in mad directions.

As for the stern measures that so distress you, I myself did not like them at first, but I have come to see their painful necessity. The Jewish race is a sore spot to any nation that harbors it. I have never hated the individual Jew – yourself I have always cherished as a friend, but you will know that I speak in all honesty when I say I have loved you, not because of your race but in spite of it.

I cannot rest after the letter you last sent me. It is so unlike you I can only attribute its contents to your fear of the censorship. The man I have loved as a brother, whose heart has ever been brimming with sympathy and friendship, cannot possibly partake of even a passive partnership in the butchery of innocent people.

I trust and pray that it may be so, that you will write me no exposition, which might be dangerous for you – only a simple ‘yes’.

That will tell me that you play the part of expediency but that your heart has not changed, and that I was not deluded in believing you to be always a man of fine and liberal spirit to whom wrongs ...

Eagerly I await the one word that will set my heart at peace. Write your ‘yes’ quickly.

I have your letter. The word is ‘no’.

Like a knife stabbed through the heart.

And I will no longer have any dealings with Jews, except for the receipt of money.