could, I took the green heads off. The others I trampled
down with my feet. I made a heap of ashes of them.

During a battle, when the blood is hot, and one is carried away by
excitement, one cuts down everything that is at hand, right and left.
When one is spilling blood, one loses one's self, one does not know
where one is in the world. At such a time, one does not honour old age.
One does not care about weak women. One has no pity for little children.
Blood is simply poured out like water.... When I was cutting down the
enemy, I felt a hatred and a malice I had never experienced before,
immediately after I had delivered the first blow. The more I killed the
more excited I became. I urged myself to go on. I was so beside myself,
so enflamed, so ecstatic that I smashed up, and destroyed everything
before me. I cut about me on all sides. Most of all the "little ones"
suffered at my hands--the young peas in the fat little pods, the tiny
cucumbers that were just showing above ground. These excited me by their
silence and their coldness. And I gave them such a share that they would
never forget me. I knocked off heads, tore open bellies, shattered to
atoms, beat, murdered, killed. May I know of evil as little as I know
how I came to be so wicked. Innocent potatoes, poor things, that lay
deep in the earth, I dug out, just to show them that there was no hiding
from me. Little onions and green garlic I tore up by the roots. Radishes
flew about me like hail. And may the Lord punish me if I even tasted a
single bite of anything. I remembered the law in the Bible forbidding
it. And Jews do not plunder. Every minute, when an evil spirit came and
tempted me to taste a little onion or a young garlic, the words of the
Bible came into my mind.... But I did not cease from beating, breaking,
wounding, and killing and cutting to pieces, old and young, poor and
rich, big and little, without the least mercy....

On the contrary, I imagined I heard their wails and groans and cries for
mercy, and I was not moved. It was remarkable that I who could not bear
to see a fowl slaughtered, or a cat beaten, or a dog insulted, or a
horse whipped--I should be such a tyrant, such a murderer....

"Vengeance," I shouted without ceasing, "vengeance. I will have my
revenge of you for all the Jewish blood that was spilled. I will repay
you for Jerusalem, for the Jews of Spain and Portugal, and for the Jews
of Morocco. Also for the Jews who fell in the pas