It was only in my fourteenth to fifteenth year of life that I first began to stumble more often upon the word Jew, partly in the context of political discourse. I felt towards it [anti-Jewish polemic] a mild distaste, being unable to forefend myself from sensing an unpleasant feeling, which always crept up on me, whenever denominational unpleasantries were carried out in my presence.
I perceived the only noteworthy difference to lie in their strange confession of faith. For them to have been persecuted solely on account of this, as I then believed, sometimes made my [abovementioned] distaste of [witnessing] unkind remarks directed at them turn into outright repulsion.
I do not wish to suggest that the way and manner in which I would [eventually] become acquainted with it [the Jewish question] felt particularly pleasant to me [at the time]. In Jews I still saw only the confession, and, therefore, in the name of humanitarian tolerance, I considered the cessation of religious infighting to justly apply in this case as well. So I deemed the tone, especially the one displayed by the anti-Semitic Vienna press, as unworthy of the [rich] cultural tradition of a great nation. I felt oppressed by the remembrance of certain medieval events, which I did not gladly wish to see repeated. As the aforementioned newspapers were not generally well-regarded (whence this [impression] came from, I myself was not exactly aware of at the time), I viewed them more as (by)products of livid envy, rather than results of a systematic, though misguided, perspective.
The infinitely more noble form (as I saw it), in which the truly great press addressed all these attacks, or, what to me seemed even more graceful, not even mentioned them, but was simply dead-silent about, only served to strengthen my opinion.
I eagerly devoured the so-called world press (New Free Press, Vienna Daily Paper, and so on), and was stunned both by the [wide] range [of subjects] it provided its readers with, as well as by the objectivity of its detailed presentation. I appreciated its appropriate tone.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
