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had felt for the first time that, as she put it, something singles her out from those people, she belongs to some other category. That had started her thinking, and she had tried to find out more about it all from books and conversations, which was how she had come to recognize that they hated her precisely for that. It was her view, in fact, that “we Jews are different from other people,” and that difference was the crux of it, that’s why people hate Jews. She also remarked how peculiar it was to live “being aware of that differentness,” and that sometimes she felt a sort of pride but at other times more a shame of sorts because of it. She wanted to know how we felt in regard to our differentness, whether we were proud of it or rather ashamed. Her younger sister and Annamarie didn’t really know; I myself hadn’t so far been able to find a reason for these feelings either. Anyway, a person cannot entirely decide for himself about this differentness: in the end, that is precisely what the yellow star is there for, as far as I know. I told her as much, but she dug her heels in: the difference is “carried within ourselves.” According to me, however, what we wear on the outside is the more crucial. We argued a lot about this, though I can’t think why, because to be honest I didn’t see any of it as being all that important. Still, there was something in her line of thought that somehow exasperated me; in my opinion it’s all a lot simpler. Besides which, I also wanted to win the argument, naturally. At one point or another, it seemed that Annamarie wanted to say her piece, but she didn’t get a chance even once, as by then the two of us were not paying much attention to her.
    In the end, I brought up an example. I had already occasionally given some idle thought to the matter, which is how it entered my head. Then again, I had also read a book, a sort of novel, not long ago. A beggar and a prince who, leaving that one difference aside, conspicuously resembled each other both facially and physically, to the point they could not be told apart, exchanged fates with each other out of sheer curiosity, until in the end the beggar turned into a real prince while the prince became a real beggar. I asked the girl to try and imagine the same thing about herself. It was not very likely, of course, but then all kinds of things are possible, after all. What could have happened to her, let’s say in very early infancy, when a person is not yet able to speak or remember, it didn’t matter how, but suppose she had somehow been swapped or got mixed up with a child from another family whose documents were in perfect order from a racial point of view. In this hypothetical case it would now be the other girl who would perceive the difference and of course wear the yellow star, whereas she, in view of what she knew, would see herself—as of course would others—as being exactly like other people, and she would neither think about nor recognize any difference. As far as I could tell, that had quite an impact on her. At first she merely fell silent, then very slowly, but with a softness I felt as almost palpable, her lips parted as if she were wishing to say something. That was not what happened, however, but something else, much odder: she burst into tears. She buried her head in the angle of her elbow, which was resting on the table, her shoulders shaken by tiny jerks. I was utterly amazed, as that had not been my aim at all, and anyway the sight in itself threw me somehow. I tried leaning over to pat her hair, shoulder, and a bit on her arm, begging her not to cry. But she exclaimed bitterly, in a voice that choked as it went on, something along the lines that if our own qualities had nothing to do with it, then it was all pure chance, and if she could be someone else than the person she was forced to be, then “the whole thing has no sense,” and that notion, in her opinion, “is unbearable.” I was perturbed, given I