As soon as they left the narrow alley, the bright sun blinded them. It seemed to Emil as though someone had taken a huge mirror and turned it so that the sun was shining right into their eyes. He stood there, dazed. The man who had been holding onto the boys gripped them even firmer. He also stopped in his tracks, surprised by the bright sun.
Before Karl got used to the light, it looked as if there was a river in front of them, with hundreds of people swimming in it. At first the boys were spellbound by what they saw. Karl was so curious that he tried to run over and see what was happening, but the man held him back. Emil was curious, too, but he was too frightened to move closer. If the man had let go of them, Emil would have simply run away without even turning around.
They had never seen anything like it in their lives—not on a Sunday or even a holiday. They were standing near a large public square. Hundreds of people were there, some of them down on the ground, others running back and forth. There was a great commotion, with lots of shouting. As Karl watched, his eyes grew wider and wider.
The closer they came to the people on the ground, the stranger the scene before them seemed. Now that they could see clearly what was happening, they were completely bewildered.
The people on the ground were scrubbing the pavement. That much was clear, but why were they washing the streets? And, what was even more puzzling, why were they doing it without brushes or rags, but with their bare hands?
But Emil and Karl didn’t have much time to wonder. The man in the uniform turned them over to someone else. He raised his hand and said, “Jewboys!”
“Very good!” said the other man in a calm, cold voice. And then, without warning, he shouted so loud that Emil and Karl froze. “Don’t just stand there! Get down on the ground right now and start washing—and make it fast!”
Emil and Karl dropped to the ground as if they had been shot. Immediately they began to rub the pavement back and forth. The two boys found themselves in a group of several dozen people, in the middle of which was a basin of water. There were four or five uniformed men who stood there, watching them.
“Dip your hands in the bowl! Don’t scrub with dry hands!” Emil and Karl dipped their hands into the water and rubbed the stones.
After dipping his hands into the water about a dozen times, Karl’s hands began to burn. The skin and even the bones of his hands were inflamed. When he dipped his hands into the bowl it felt as though he was putting them into fire.
Karl examined his hands. They even looked as if they had been set on fire. He stopped scrubbing the stones. He felt that if he rubbed them even one more time, he would scream from the pain, and he didn’t want to scream out loud.
Emil wasn’t far away, hunched over. Karl watched his friend scrubbing the pavement rapidly with his hands and crying softly to himself.
“Emil, Emil!” Karl called to him, but Emil didn’t hear. How could he do it, Karl thought. How could he work with his hands like that, dipping them into that basin of burning water?
Perhaps because he’s crying, Karl said to himself. It’s better to cry.
Karl’s hands hurt so much that he wished he could get rid of them. If someone were to chop them off, he would feel much better. Even though they were filthy, he could see through the dirt how swollen and red his hands had become. In some places the skin was torn and dark blood was running out of the wounds.
One of the overseers kicked him.
“Get to work! No loafing! Dirty Jew!”
All at once, without knowing why, something flashed through his head—
“Maybe it’s because Emil is a Jew?”
Karl didn’t understand clearly, but he continued to repeat over and over—
“Maybe because he’s a Jew?”
He plunged his hands quickly into the basin and rubbed the pavement.
“Because he’s a Jew! Because he’s a Jew!”
It became a little easier for him to wash the stones—not much, but a little bit easier. Back and forth he scrubbed to the words “Jew,” “Jew,” as if he were moving to the ticking of a clock.
Someone blew a blast on a whistle, then another. Everyone stopped working. They raised their heads. A huge man stood over them. Emil and Karl used this opportunity to move closer together. The man spoke, smiling. He spoke gently, pronouncing each word distinctly, as if each one came out of his mouth with a little smile. Neither Emil nor Karl understood very much of what he said, but they were glad to have a chance to rest their hands.
The man continued to speak and to smile. He spoke about the children of Israel, who were being given the opportunity to return to the beginnings of their history. They were replaying it from the very start:
“But there, in ancient Egypt, they made bricks without straw. Now they wash stones without brushes, but with their bare hands. It’s almost the same thing.”
And the man added, with a little smile, “With their clean, intelligent hands, with their delicate little hands that hate to work.
“But the children of Israel will never escape from this Egypt.
“Oh, no!” said the man, softly but clearly, and again with his little smile, which now made Karl burn, just like the water in the basin.
“In this Egypt the children of Israel will die, die, die!”
There was another whistle blast. Once more everyone crawled, like snakes, and scrubbed the pavement. The men in uniform refilled the empty basins from large bottles. The overseers ran back and forth, stepping on hands and on heads. Some people, who bore the brunt of the overseers’ boots more than the others, lay on the ground, motionless.
People were moaning and screaming. Karl screamed with them. It felt good to scream along with everyone else. It seemed to make things easier.
Near Karl was a man dressed in a frock coat and top hat. He scrubbed the stones very rapidly. Three or four overseers stood around him, and each time that the top hat fell off his head they forced him to put it on again right away. When the hat was back on top of his head they laughed wildly.
Then all at once the man stopped and began to shout.
“I can’t do any more! I can’t do any more! I can’t stand this any longer!”
The overseers grabbed him and dragged him off. They took him so far away that he disappeared from sight. The top hat still lay on the ground near Karl.