The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town

One of the striking aspects of the Konitz story is the estrangement between the Christian and Jewish communities, despite them living and working in close proximity to each other. Smith delves into this issue in Chapter 2, where he explains the social order in Konitz in terms of a plot or narrative with “heroes” and “villains.” Even prior to Winter’s murder, in Konitz, Jews and Christians rarely associate with each other, marriage between them is strongly disapproved, and there is a language barrier. Christian townspeople treat their Jewish neighbors as if they are members of an “alien” species, spouting deeply prejudiced views: “[T]hey are a civilization apart, and […] one questions their humanity” (88). The system of othering and dehumanizing an entire group of people makes it easy to justify atrocity and prejudice. Moreover, this community divide is not just religious but social: “Although both men [Hoffmann and Lewy] are butchers and neighbors, Hoffmann belongs to the respectable middle class […]. Lewy, by contrast, [belongs] to a ‘lowly community’ for whom ‘nothing is sacrosanct’” (87). Lewy’s lower class status in addition to his Jewish identity make it even easier for both the lower-class and middle-class Christians to view him and others in the Jewish community as animalistic “others.”

The stories told by the Christians about the Jews “imply an allegory about community, about the lines people draw between themselves and their neighbors” (83). Christian and Jewish visions of reality were therefore disparate, making it easier for the advantaged group to commit violence against the less advantaged group. The idea of neighbors being strangers leading to violence is manifested most shockingly in the case of the 1939 massacre at Jedwabne, in which the Polish members of the town, at the instigation of the occupying Nazis, turned against their Jewish neighbors and killed them. This estrangement happens in spite of the German Jews’ best efforts to assimilate into their country. For example, at the turn of the century, in the wake of polarization between Germans and Polish people in Prussia, German Jews become particularly insistent about asserting their Germanness. Yet despite this, they are singled out by the Nazi Party as a scapegoat for German societal ills, illustrating the atrocity inherent in the system of othering.