Finished reading Stefan Zweig's memoir (he and his wife killed themselves after the completion of the book). Five hundred pages, but only one is dedicated to the greatest tragedy of Europe - the elimination of the Jews. Zweig tried all his life to become a "generic" European, an Austrian, and never something particular like a Jew. I found that many of the expressions and ideas of my family and their circle of friends originated from Zweig, or maybe he captured precisely the spirit of the times. My uncle called his business "Europlast" to emphasize its Europeanness (vs. those lazy criollos). Zweig, like his generation, believed that his ethnic origin was an unimportant detail, but it was exactly what condemned him to desperate exile. I dislike cosmopolitan Jews; I am a Zionist.
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