"A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person’s legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realised that he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man’s revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds."
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Jews from the United KingdomJews from PolandBiographersJournalists from PolandHistorians from Poland
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Isaac Deutscher
Isaac Deutscher (3 April 1907 – 19 August 1967) was a Polish-born Marxist writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom at the outbreak of World War II. He is best remembered as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a com
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