Friedrich

It’s 1941, and it’s dark in the stairwell. The narrator knocks on the Schneiders’ door. The door opens. The entire apartment is dark. The narrator is looking for Friedrich, but he has gone to a friend’s house. The rabbi asks the narrator to help him thread a needle. He and Herr Schneider are sowing yellow stars on their clothes. The rabbi remarks that they have gone back to the Middle Ages, and that perhaps they will burn Jews again as they did then. The narrator wants to know why people hate the Jews. The rabbi then tells the narrator a story about a king who needed money to pay his soldiers, so he had them pillage a Jewish settlement. An older Jewish man heard about what the king had ordered. He and his wife then sell all their belongings to pay to send their son away. When the king’s soldiers come, they pillage the town and kill the people. The older couple is killed. The son, Solomon, finds their bodies and buries them. He does not know of the sacrifice they made to save him.