Source: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham eds., Nazism 1919-1945, (London 1974) p. 467-8. [From the memoirs of Melita Maschmann, German member of the BDM ΓÇô the League of German Girls ΓÇô the Nazi youth movement for girls]
I had learned from the example of my parents [who were German Nationalist supporters] that one could have anti-Semitic opinions without this interfering in one's personal relations with individual Jews. There may appear to be a vestige of tolerance in this attitude, but it is really just this confusion which I blame for the fact that I later contrived to dedicate body and soul to an inhuman political system, without this giving me doubts about my own individual decency. In preaching that all the misery of the nations was due to the Jews or that the Jewish spirit was seditious and Jewish blood was corrupting, I was not compelled to think of you or old Herr Lewy or Rosel Cohn: I thought only of the bogey-man, "The Jew". And when I heard that the Jews were being driven from their professions and homes and imprisoned in ghettos, the points switched automatically in my mind to steer me round the thought that such a fate could also overtake you or old Lewy. It was only the Jew who was being persecuted and "made harmless"
