Not surprisingly the Nazis attributed to Jews the most extreme manifestations of human existence -- as shown in the depiction of the social climb of successful Jewish merchants. If individual Jews are poor, then such shows their pitiable incompetence. If Jews succeed and clean up their acts then such shows an intent to deceive about a loathsomeness that they can never quite get eliminate. They could be cowardly and reckless; they could live in studied and deliberate isolation from the rest of humanity and yet seek to infiltrate (and, being Jews -- at least in Nazi ideology, corrupt) gentile life. They are firmly attached to the Ghetto, yet they strive to escape it.
Seventy years later about everyone sees it as too ludicrously crude to convince anyone. Yet it apparently did convince many Germans at worst to see nothing wrong about the most ghastly deeds done to Jews... and many others to see not want to know.
...The truth is that before 1933 the Jews of "Poland and Russia" may have assimilated more fully into the cultures of German-speaking countries than into any others. Yiddish is easy to learn German from than, for example, English. German culture (if not the abandonment of Judaism) was itself culture and modernity. They found no contradiction between being a German and being a Jew, often thinking such a combination the best of all possible worlds.
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