"One day, Hitler recounts, he went strolling through the Inner City.
'I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black side-locks. Is this a Jew?...I observed the man furtively and cautiously...I stared at the foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature...'
"Then he took to the streets to observe the 'phenomenon' more closely.
'Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity...Later I often grew sick to the stomach from the smell of these caftan-wearers.'
-The Rise and Fall (26)
Nothing has ever struck me as powerfully in readings of Shirer as this passage quoted from Mein Kampf. I was moved to write about it on first reading years ago. I write about it here for the propinquity of "apparition". To his Vienna acquaintance, Hanisch, Hitler, in "his long black shabby overcoat, which...resembled a caftan and which had been given him by a Hungarian Jewish old-clothes dealer", appeared to be the "apparition", not fully human, "rarely" seen "among Christians." To Hitler, the Viennese Jew he saw in "black caftan and black side-locks" was the "apparition", distinct "from the rest of humanity."
