The Jewish Census (Judenzählung)

Arnold Zweig

1916

At midnight a soft hand touched me: “Get up.” I stepped outside the silent sleeping barracks and saw: Azrael, the angel who reigns over the dead rushed down from the night firmament, all revenge-winged fury, blew into the shofar, and screamed: “To the census, you dead Jews of the German army!”

In no time the field was swarming with quiet shapes…

Please login or register for free access to Posen Library
Register
Already have an account?
Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Arnold Zweig

1887–1968

The German-born novelist and writer Arnold Zweig is best known for his antiwar novel The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1927). A Zionist who was heavily influenced by Martin Buber, he wrote a romantic account of his own encounter with Russian Jewry, The Face of East European Jewry (1918), which was illustrated by Hermann Struck. He was also influenced by the writings of Freud, with whom he corresponded for twelve years, and in 1927 published a psychological study of antisemitism, Caliban oder Politik und Leidenschaft. After the Nazi takeover, he settled in Haifa, but, unable to master the Hebrew language and frustrated that Zionism failed to develop in a binational and primarily cultural Buberian direction, he left the newly created State of Israel to settle in Communist East Germany, where he was much feted by the new regime.

You may also like

The Face of East European Jewry

Is this the Jew of the East? Is he an old man, who, almost entirely removed from the present day and certainly removed from the future, lives a life that is limited to the most oppressed and narrowest…
View Source

Months and Days

[ . . . ] And we get out of their way; we move in the opposite direction, toward where they’ve come from, toward Petroshi.And you see, they do not forbid it. And it may be that in Petroshi, where they…
View Source

Hope against Hope: A Memoir

The death of an artist is never a random event, but a last act of creation that seems to illuminate the whole of his life under a powerful ray of light. [ . . . ] Why are people surprised when poets…
View Source