Advertising Brochure to the Antisemitic Propaganda Film The Eternal Jew - Filmed by the Nazis in Polish Ghettoes. 1939

Advertising Brochure to the Antisemitic Propaganda Film The Eternal Jew - Filmed by the Nazis in Polish Ghettoes. 1939

Advertising brochure to the antisemitic propaganda film 'Der ewige Jude' [The Eternal Jew] staged and filmed by the Nazis in Polish ghettoes immediately after the Nazi occupation in 1939.

The movie "The Eternal Jew", with production personally supervised by Hitler and Goebbeles, was crucial to Nazi antisemitic incitement. The movie was designed to remove the "camouflage" from the face of the Jew and to portray him as the most deadly enemy of the Reich. The movie, which was filmed in the ghettoes of Poland by propaganda company photographers PK689, presented 'the authentic Jew in his natural habitat' - the filth, the wretchedness, the ugliness, the comparison to rats spreading pestilence, the cunning, the greed, the inherent laziness and xenophobia were presented to the 'enlightened' German viewer cloaked as a 'documentary film' documenting the alleged 'truth about the Jews' as appears in the title of this pamphlet: Ein Dokumentarfilm uber das Weltjudentum [A Documentary about World Jewry].

The recurring motif in the film is the complete identity of the subhuman Jew of the Polish ghetto with the Jew of Germany, familiar to the viewer under cover of of the 'cultured German.' As the film opens, the narrator warns: 'The cultured Jew familiar to us in Germany only shows us a small part of the nature of his race. This movie presents true photographs of Polish ghettoes. It shows Jews as they truly are, before the they succeed in hiding behind the mask of the civilized European.'

For the purposes of this propaganda, as can be seen in the brochure before us as well, a group of Jews was photographed 'before' and 'after.' A smiling youth, shaven, bareheaded, dressed in a suit and tie, may be a benign and harmless neighbor. But this is merely misleading, as the truth is revealed in the authentic clothing and character of this same Jew when he wears a beard, a hat and a caftan.

Published for the 'enlightened' public, this pamphlet was meant to publicize the just-released film as much as possible - still photographs from the film showing Jews 'before' and 'after, ' Jewish figures 'caught' in the ghetto, and a page-long antisemitic text explaining and accompanying the film, 'revealing' to the viewers the 'truth' about the Jews, and invites them to come and watch it.

Literature: Redemption of Ahasuerus, The "Eternal Jew" in Nazi Film, New York, 1991.

[8] p. 23x30 cm. good condition.