Ruth, her family, and other Jews experience the growing anti-Semitism in Vienna like a harsh dagger that they have to inevitably accept. This is displayed early in the memoir when Ruth recalls her cousin, Hans, describing his experience with the contortion of his limbs. He states, “What matters is not just what we endure, but also what kind of misery it is, where it comes from. The worst is the kind that’s imposed by others with malicious intent. That’s the kind from which no one recovers” (p.18). In this sense, Hans explains that he holds more pain in the emotional damage inflicted racist people who have every motive to produce that agony. Despite this pain held by the Jewish population, Ruth tells the reader that she holds the mindset to
