The Eternal Jew
Background: These are eight of the 265 photographs
in a book called The Eternal Jew, published by the Nazi Party's
publishing house in 1937. The book consists entirely of photographs
with brief captions. The photos chosen generally make Jews look as
unpleasant as possible.
Source: Der Ewige Jude, Munich: Zentralverlag der
NSDAP., Franz Eher, Nachf., 1937).
||This is the book's cover, symbolically presenting many of
the arguments against Jews. The ugly Jew is holding part of
Russia under his arm, branded with the hammer and sickle. One
hand holds a whip. The other hand holds bloody coins.
||Caption: "Eastern Jewish districts develop... What
Kant called "a nation of cheaters" moved to the
promised land of Germany. Every day newspapers (even those
not hostile to the Jews) report the dishonest dealings of
Eastern Jews. The cleverness of Jewish criminality is
astonishing. Just as astonishing is the patience with which
the threatened population put up with these criminal
activities. (p. 16)
||Caption: "In Europe's capitals. The Jews have a
self-chosen ghetto in Berlin around Grenadier and Dragoner
Streets. Only the height of its buildings separate it from
his Eastern models. It's the genuine article: the same
unpleasant creatures, the same Hebraic shop signs, the same
masses of playing children, the same bad smells and piles of
filth." (p. 17)
||Caption: "Grenadier Street. In this Jewish
district of Berlin, a German feels as if he is in enemy
territory. He is watched, surrounded, followed. A half dozen
Hebrew newspapers are printed. Here the police uncover
breeding grounds of criminal and political vermin." (p.
||Caption: "Neanderthalic art. In sculpture even
more than painting, Jews display their absolute lack of
talent. To get the attention that their vanity demands, they
turn primitive. Here, Jacob Epstein-London looks thoughtfully
at his disgusting work of a pregnant idiot (1931), which he
calls "Genesis" (birth). (p. 51)
||Caption: "Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan.
The Galician Charlie Chaplin (whose mother was born Thonstein)
emigrated to America. Along with Jackie Coogan, who also came
from the East (Jacob Cohen), their tear-jerking comedy makes
poverty both pitiable and laughable, reaching the tear ducts
of the innocent viewers. The slapstick gang of this
flat-footed, clumsy, impoverished yet eternally generous man
with the huge shoes was a sensation for the non-Jews.
Flat-footed but noble--that is Charlie Chaplin's formula.
||Caption: The Jew in his element: With Blacks in a
Parisian night club. The Jew bring people the glittering
world of perversion as a way of unnerving and enslaving them.
He seems to worry as little about it as the rats worry about
the plague they carry (p. 97).
||Caption: A picture of German economic life in 1930:
Each column shows a branch of the German economy, The figure
to the left shows the total number of companies. The number
of Jewish firms is shown by the black bar, the non-Jewish by
the white bar. When one remembers that according to the 1925
census there were "only" about 555,000 religious
Jews in Germany--which means by a generous estimate no more
than a million Jews by blood in 1930, there are 60 to 100
Germans for each Jew. This makes clear what it means when,
for example, up to 60% of the German economy is led by Jews.