Yet a corpse in the street is nothing extraordinary. You pass them by with indifference.
Europe 1941. Rickshaws, horse omnibuses, the ghetto, the yellow patches or other identification signs for certain minorities, the fist, the boot, and the machine gun. If there have been some fluctuations on the culture chart for a while, then the year 1941 is a vertical, plummeting line.27
Europe of 1941 is a shame neither for the conquered states, nor for the barbarian German hordes—but for the whole world for having permitted such a disgrace, for not having stopped the giant, but rather having let him arm himself and wage war, setting half the world on fire. From 1939 onwards [27] this shall be the sign of savagery, of atrocities by fire and sword, by murder and fire, by pillaging and plundering:
[a sketched swastika]
Somebody is sitting up against the wall on the street. A grey figure. It sometimes sits silently, sometimes begs, sometimes just watches the passers-by. Yet hunger never leaves its eyes. Mortal hunger. Its legs are getting thicker and thicker. These are not legs, but enormous blocks of flesh swollen due to starvation. They are swollen logs. It is a macabre, living example of elephantiasis pedis.28 And this enormous mass of flesh is one festering, swollen wound. Swarms of flies fly around it. They land and drink the trickling blood and pus. An unaccustomed person automatically averts his gaze from this sight. But it cannot be done. The head becomes motionless. The muscles grow taut. The eyelids become too short to cover the eyes. The wound remains. The whole street is a wound. The ghetto is a stinking, festering wound. The sun is a wound. It will not let you ignore it. Having managed to overcome this frozen inertia, you fling yourself into the crowd to look, to listen, [28] to forget, so as not to see the wound anymore. And the crowd absorbs everything. It transforms everything into one wave, one drop in this sea of people. It spins and circles aimlessly, restlessly and without direction. It leads you in front of shop windows where you can see: bread, bikes, hats, and postage stamps. A barbershop. A perfumery. A café. A butcher’s store. Everything dances a horrible can-can, a terrible danse macabre29 before your eyes. Everything spins,
