54
PARTISAN REVIEW
An irrepressible sense arose in me that the Jewish question had not
been solved in the Soviet Union and that anti-Semitism had not
been overcome . . . .
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•
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I am no longer sure what day in January 1933 brought sensa–
tional and unbelievable news that the government was allowing the
Nazi troops to rally on the Biilowplatz on Sunday , the 22nd of
January. This square was known throughout Germany as the center
of the German Communist Party, which had its headquarters there
in the Karl-Liebnecht-House.
On that Sunday the communists deserted the square, and while
all Germany followed events, the SA and SS brazenly paraded there
with their banners, showing the world that they had nothing to fear
from the present and that in the near future they could expect to ac–
quire complete power over Germany.
The Communist Party had not only refrained from mobilizing
its own armed Red Front units, but had also strictly forbidden com–
munists to do the slightest thing that might tip off the Nazis that they
were unwelcome intruders in this neighborhood . The Party had
ordered its members and sympathizers to play dead.
I seldom took part in street marches in Berlin, and usually only
in the company offriends . But a few days after that Nazi demonstra–
tion, I found myself thrown in with a group of marchers who lived
outside the city, and I stayed with them to the end. Even those
among them who knew each other hardly spoke. The demonstrators
had a good reason for keeping quiet, which everyone was thinking of
and no one wanted to express: We should have been here on
Sunday,
but now it hardly matters; by now it is too late. We shake our fists at
our enemies' backs, we spit into the void against the wind , and the
spit flies back in our faces .... Of course we had turned out, we
marched in orderly columns, shouted all the slogans, raised our
clenched fists and intoned "Red Front!" - but where was that front?
To be sure, shock over the events of Sunday and discipline had
brought us out here on this Wednesday, but also a hope, a sad, often
abused hope to which we continued to cling.
The memory of this demonstration and the men with whom I
marched for several hours, or the two tired older women in front of
us and the young worker with the cracked glasses behind me - this
memory is somewhat hazy in its details . But it has not ceased to
