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…

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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.

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