Let’s start with excerpt from a collection of essays by Joseph Roth. He lived from 1894 to 1939, and wrote more than a dozen novels and countless newspaper articles.His masterwork, The Radetzky March, is considered one of the great novels of the 20th century. We can’t recommend it highly enough.Here is what Roth—ever ironic—wrote about Vienna’s Jewish quarter back in 1927. The translation is by Michael Hoffman and it is read for us by Allan Corduner in London.The two principal streets of Leopoldstadt are the Taborstrasse and the Praterstrasse. The Praterstrasse is almost elegant. It leads to Prater and pleasure. It is populated by Jews and Christians. It is smooth, wide, and bright. There are plenty of cafes on it. There are a lot of cafes on the Taborstrasse too.They are Jewish cafes. Their owners are largely Jewish, their clientele is Jewish almost to a man. Jews like to go to cafes to read the paper, to play tarock and chess, to do deals.Jews are gifted chess players. Sometimes they play against Christian opponents. A good Christian chess player is not likely to be an anti-Semite. The first world war caused a lot of Jewish refugees to come to Vienna.When the war was over, they were repatriated, sometimes forcibly. A Social Democratic provincial governor had them thrown out. To Christian Socialists, they are Jews.To German nationalists, they are Semitic. To Social Democrats, they are unproductive elements. What they are is out-of-work proletarians. A peddler is a member of the proletariat. If he’s not allowed to work with his hands, he works with his feet. It’s not his fault if he can’t find a better job.