This matter of the Bergjuden risked putting me in a bad position: I had no bias, I just wanted to respect a certain intellectual honesty, and I had trouble understanding Bierkamp’s insistence on wanting to liquidate them at all costs; was he sincerely convinced of their Jewish racial origins? For me, that didn’t emerge clearly from the documentation; as to their appearance and behavior, they didn’t at all resemble the Jews we knew; seeing them at home, they seemed in every point like the Kabards, the Balkars, or the Karachai. They too offered us sumptuous gifts, it was a tradition, you didn’t
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