Antisemitic materials, Europe and America, 19th - 20th Centuries | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

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Collection Overview

Title: Antisemitic materials, Europe and America, 19th - 20th Centuries

ID: RG-72.13/RG-72.13

Primary Creator: Victor, Ed (1960s -- 1990s)

Extent: 0.0

Scope and Contents of the Materials

This collection comprises postcards published in Europe and America by the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century. The collection contains 78 postal cards. They feature a theme correlated with "ugliness" of Jews by showing an exaggeratedly nasty facial and posture features. Thematic representation shows a mundane encounter of non-Jews with Jews and the Jews conducting business, the Jews at leisure, the Jews in groups, all in all in a grotesque and offensive for the Jews manner. The authors of these postal cards overall emphasize the Jewish otherness by showing them as indecent, ugly and self-centered people. De-facto it is a marginalization of the Jews by presenting them as uncultured, tasteless, lacking good manners and uncivilized people. The elements of grotesque and satire arguably by the thoughts of the authors perhaps should make the picture funny, however it is highly arguably. Admittedly these series of the pictures constitute a pure anti-Jewish and antisemitic presentation of the Jews disseminating a message of them the people who do not belong to the mainstream society in Europe and America.

Collection Historical Note

Overall these postal cards, being blank of sent as correspondences reflect a certain societal trend with regard to the Jews. The Jews are largely marginalized by the means of the presentation. It is a certain, perhaps an officially established narrative to show the Jews as unattractive, if not ugly, doing their business no matter what. Largely their conduct would be in contradiction with the established norms of the Christian society or overall with the non-Jewish society.

We shall distinguish between the level of the grotesque, satire, humor to determine the border when a relatively harmless and simply humorous images are no longer that innocent and would become a severe anti-Jewish and de-facto antisemitic and offensive images. Overall, the content, would it be a narrative, an illustrative images, or the caption is equally a parody and by all means is antisemitic. A typically stereotyped by perception the Jewish anti-societal customs are reactively overemphasized in terms of the generalization, making all Jews guilty of the of money lending, lies, false representation, egoism, primitive talks and deliberately unattractive in their Jewish attire. These postal cards were published in Britain, United States, France, Poland, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary.

Sold at the popular European resorts Marienbad and Karlsbad, these postcard had become a part of the milieu and often were used for regular correspondences and by these means disseminating antisemitism. With a slogan "Gruss aus Karlsbad," or "Gruss aus of Marienbad," that is Greetings from Karlsbad and Marienbad, both the European famous health care resorts in Austria-Hungary (nowadays Czech Republic). Thus a series of these antisemitic, pretentiously satiric postal cards became a popular well-recognized images. It was a false representation of the Jews and at the same time a signature of those famous resorts.

Some postcards like printed in German language were of rather political inclination, disclaiming, as they pretended, a false Jewish patriotism. The other demonstrated the Jewish exploitation over non-Jews, for example showing the car with a Jewish family and the three ordinary non-Jewish people being used inside the car instead of the engine.

Another facet of anti-Jewish satire of a cartoon style was a demonstration of a Jewish anti-societal position, regardless to the country of residence. It was equally presented on American, British, German, Austrian, French, Czech, Hungarian and Polish series.

Some satirical, if not mocking Jewish religious practices, were a series of postcards deriding Jewish holidays and religious customs.

It is should be noted that the overall antisemitic postcard published in America and Britain had been used in mundane correspondences, that is the second or the rare pages of them were usually used for a short narratives, while the antisemitic postcard published in Europe, for the rare exceptions, were not filled with any narrative and remained blank on the rare side.

Biographical Note

Mr. Victor started his collection guided primarily by philatelic interest. He collected letters, envelopes, postcards and other documents bearing a postal stamp or institutional stamps of the respective authorities and agencies. At a certain point, he realizes that the fate of the people, reflected in the short narratives, is of eternal historic value and shall not be measured only in a philatelic dimension. The content of various wartime correspondences reveals a historic enormity of victimization, dehumanization and personal tragedies on one side and a cold blood calmness of perpetrators on the other.

Box and Folder Listing

Document/Artifact of Item-Level 56: RG-72.13.56, Tostede, local emergency money, anti-Jewish propaganda, Germany, 1921, 1921

Tostede, local emergency money, anti-Jewish propaganda from Germany. A so-called, "Jewish currency." Fake currency of this form included antisemitic caricatures. These currencies did not hold any monetary value.<o:p></o:p>

Subject/Index Terms:: fake anti-Jewish currency; Nazi antisemitic propaganda; anti-Jewish caricatures; Antisemitic satire

Creators:: Nazi Propaganda Office