The Eternal Jew (1940 film)
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''The Eternal Jew'' is a 1940
antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...
Antisemitic: * Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, Susanne Zantop. ''The imperialist imagination: German colonialism and its legacy'',
University of Michigan Press The University of Michigan Press is part of Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. It publishes 170 new titles each year in the humanities and social sciences. Titles from the press have earned numerous awards, including ...
, 1998, p. 173. * Jack Fischel, ''The Holocaust'',
Greenwood Publishing Group Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood (stylized ABC-CLIO/Greenwood), is an educational and academic publisher ( middle school through university level) which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as G ...
, 1998, pp. 15–16. * David Stewart Hull. ''Film in the Third Reich: a study of the German cinema, 1933–1945'',
University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facul ...
, 1969, pp. 157–158. * Marvin Perry, Frederick M. Schweitzer. ''Antisemitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present'',
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, 2002, p. 78. * Hershel Edelheit, Abraham J. Edelheit. ''A world in turmoil: an integrated chronology of the Holocaust and World War II'',
Greenwood Publishing Group Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood (stylized ABC-CLIO/Greenwood), is an educational and academic publisher ( middle school through university level) which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as G ...
, 1991, 388.
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
propaganda film A propaganda film is a film that involves some form of propaganda. Propaganda films spread and promote certain ideas that are usually religious, political, or cultural in nature. A propaganda film is made with the intent that the viewer will ad ...
,1940 propaganda film: * "The Eternal Jew
940 Year 940 ( CMXL) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * The tribe of the Polans begins the construction of the following fortified settlements (Gi ...
ranks as one of the most virulent propaganda films ever made." Richard Taylor, ''Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany'', I.B.Tauris, 2006, p. 174. * "Fritz Hippler used an idea suggested by the Propaganda Ministry's anti-Jewish expert, Dr. Taubert, and produced the film The Eternal Jew." Robert Edwin Herzstein, ''The War that Hitler Won: The Most Infamous Propaganda Campaign in History'', Putnam, 1977, p. 309. * "Of the Nazi propaganda films with an antisemitic message, ''Jud Suss'' (''Jew Suss'', 1940) was without doubt the most popular and widely seen... The popularity of ''Jew Suss'' contrasts sharply with reactions to ''Der ewige Jude'' (''The Eternal Jew'', 1940)..." Toby Haggith,
Joanna Newman Joanna Newman MBE is a British academic, journalist and administrator. She is secretary general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). Prior to joining the ACU, Newman was vice-principal (international) of King's College London ...
, ''Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since 1933'', Wallflower Press, 2005, p. 74. * "Of course, the Nazis also made more conventional propaganda films, the most famous being, perhaps, The Eternal Jew."
Andrea Dworkin Andrea Rita Dworkin (September 26, 1946 – April 9, 2005) was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 years. They are found in a dozen solo ...
, ''Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation'', Simon & Schuster, 2001, p. 164. * "The Eternal Jew. Nazi propaganda film of 1940 that summarized the whole Nazi rationale for the disposition against Jews." Robert Michael, Karin Doerr, ''Nazi-Deutsch/Nazi-German: An English Lexicon of the Language of the Third Reich'', Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 154.
presented as a documentary. The film's initial German title was , the German term for the character of the "
Wandering Jew The Wandering Jew is a mythical immortal man whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. In the original legend, a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion was then cursed to walk the Earth until the Second Coming. Th ...
" in medieval folklore. The film was directed by
Fritz Hippler Fritz Hippler (17 August 1909 – 22 May 2002) was a German filmmaker who ran the film department in the Propaganda Ministry of Nazi Germany, under Joseph Goebbels. He is best known as the director of the propaganda film '' Der Ewige Jude (Th ...
at the insistence of
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
's Minister of Propaganda,
Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the '' Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to ...
. With a screenplay credited to
Eberhard Taubert Eberhard Taubert (11 May 1907 in Kassel – 2 November 1976 in Cologne) was a lawyer and anti-Semitic Nazi propagandist. He joined the Nazi party in 1931, and quickly became involved in both anti-Communist and anti-Jewish propaganda. From 1933 to ...
and narrated by
Harry Giese Harry Giese (2 March 1903 – 20 January 1991) was a German theatre and voice actor born in Magdeburg, Province of Saxony. He is best known for providing voiceovers on German newsreels during the Second World War especially Die Deutsche Woche ...
, the film consists of feature and documentary footage combined with materials filmed shortly after the Nazi occupation of Poland. At this time, Poland's Jewish population was about three million, roughly ten percent of the total population.


Background

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
and Goebbels believed that film was a vital tool for molding public opinion. The
Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...
first established a film department in 1930 and Goebbels had taken a personal interest in the use of film to promote the Nazi philosophy and agenda. Soon after the Nazi takeover, Goebbels insisted in speeches that the role of the German cinema was to serve as the "vanguard of the Nazi military". The Goebbels film appears to have been intended as a violently antisemitic version of the British film ''
The Wandering Jew The Wandering Jew is a mythical immortal man whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. In the original legend, a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion was then cursed to walk the Earth until the Second Coming. ...
'', which argued that Jews were victims of relentless persecution throughout history.
Saul Friedländer Saul Friedländer (; born October 11, 1932) is a Czech-Jewish-born historian and a professor emeritus of history at UCLA. Biography Saul Friedländer was born in Prague to a family of German-speaking Jews. He was raised in France and lived thr ...
suggests that Goebbels' intent was to counter three films: ''Jew Süss'', '' The House of Rothschild'', and ''The Wandering Jew''. These three films, all released in 1933–34, showed that Jews were persecuted throughout history; the Goebbels films presented the opposite message. In 1937, a special wing of the Propaganda Ministry put on an art exhibition in
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...
titled '' Der ewige Jude''. It followed this up with the publication of a book of the same title, consisting of 265 photographs, each with a derogatory caption asserting the degeneracy of the Jewish race. In November 1938, Goebbels made a series of attacks against the Jews in the German media that were a factor which resulted in the
pogrom A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian ...
known as
Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation fro ...
. Despite the emotional satisfaction afforded the Nazis by carrying out their antisemitism with direct violence, Kristallnacht was considered by Hitler to have been a political disaster both within Germany and internationally. Not only did the brutality indirectly caused by Goebbels evoke harsh criticism internationally, the mixed reaction in the German media showed a lack of broad-based support among Germans for antisemitism and violence. Hitler expressed his frustration and anger at the mixed response from the German media and insisted that, instead of openly calling for violence against the Jews as Goebbels had in instigating the pogrom, Nazi propaganda should "elucidate events of foreign policy" in such a way that the German people themselves would call for violence against the Jews. In response to Hitler's harsh reprimand, Goebbels launched a campaign to promote the antisemitic views of the Nazis to the German populace. He ordered each film studio to make an antisemitic film. In the case of ''The Eternal Jew'', Goebbels conceived of a film that would communicate to the German people the same antisemitic message that had been the theme of the 1937 Munich exhibition. Hitler preferred films such as ''The Eternal Jew'' which presented the Nazi antisemitic agenda openly and directly; however Goebbels disliked the crudeness of such straightforward approaches, preferring the much more subtle approach of couching antisemitic messages in an engaging story with popular appeal. The film '' Jud Süß'' is an example of Goebbels' preferred approach.


Production

Although Goebbels did not generally take an active role in the production of particular films, he elected to do so in the case of major propaganda films such as ''The Eternal Jew''. The film was in production for over a year. Throughout the end of 1939 and the beginning of 1940, Goebbels devoted "constant attention" to the production of what he referred to as "the Jew film". As early as 1938, Goebbels had wanted to have a film crew travel to
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
to shoot the ghetto scenes; however, he was unable to gain permission from the Polish government. In October and November 1939, almost immediately after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland, he instructed Hippler to send camera crews to
Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of ca ...
,
Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
, Cracow and
Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...
to shoot footage of
Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lo ...
. The footage that Hippler shot in the Jewish ghettos of those cities in
German-occupied Poland German-occupied Poland during World War II consisted of two major parts with different types of administration. The Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany following the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II—nearly a quarter of the ...
was the only footage shot specifically for the purpose of the film. At the beginning of the film, animated text informs the audience that this "documentary footage" shows Jews in their original state "before they put on the mask of civilized Europeans." In the Nazi press, Hippler expanded on this claim, asserting that his filming techniques captured Jews "in an unprejudiced manner, real to life as they live and as they react in their own surroundings." Although Hippler advertised the film as being a factual documentary consisting of pictures of real Jews with nothing faked or simulated, his claims were complete falsehoods. In reality, the film was an exercise in manipulation for the purposes of propaganda. In shooting his footage, Hippler did in fact simulate scenes and use actors who were performing under duress and without knowledge of how the footage would be employed. For example, in order to get shots of Jewish worship services, Hippler and Goebbels assembled the congregation of the Vilker synagogue, ordered them to wear the ''
tallit A tallit ''talit'' in Modern Hebrew; ''tālēt'' in Sephardic Hebrew and Ladino language, Ladino; ''tallis'' in Ashkenazic Hebrew and Yiddish language, Yiddish. Mishnaic Hebrew, Mish. pl. טליות ''telayot''; Heb. pl. טליתות ''tallitot' ...
him'' and ''
tefillin Tefillin (; Modern Hebrew language, Israeli Hebrew: / ; Ashkenazim, Ashkenazic pronunciation: ), or phylacteries, are a set of small black leather boxes with leather straps containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah. Te ...
'' and hold a full-scale service. When the Germans ordered the Torah reader to read from the Torah, he started by saying on camera "Today is Tuesday" signalling that his reading of the Torah was coerced since it was not customary to read the Torah on Tuesdays. Aside from the footage shot in Poland, the rest of the film consisted of stills and archival footage from feature films (often without permission) that the film presented as if they were documentary footage.


Format and structure

The movie was produced in a documentary format and, like other Hippler films, relied heavily on narration. The film can be roughly divided into four thematic areas: * Recordings from Polish ghettos * Enumeration and evaluation of numerous political, cultural and social values in the international arena of Jewish origin * Religious ceremonies, religious instruction, worship, ritual slaughter * Adolf Hitler's Reichstag speech, parading SA troops


Themes

Richard Barsam writes the film's "essential contrast is between myths and stereotypes of Jews and the Nazi ideal of a '
master race The master race (german: Herrenrasse) is a Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific concept in Nazism, Nazi ideology in which the putative "Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of Race (classification of human beings), human racial hierarchy. Members wer ...
,' between the alleged inferiority of the Jews and the superiority of the Germans." According to Stephen Fritz, Goebbels' intent was to create a film that would serve as "both a demonstration of the parasitical nature of the Jews and a justification for drastic measures against them."
Maria Tatar Maria Magdalene Tatar (born May 13, 1945) is an American academic whose expertise lies in children's literature, German literature, and folklore. She is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Chair of the Committee o ...
writes that the Nazis were able to use Hippler's film to "position the victims of their genocidal project as dangerous aggressors who had to be exterminated." Similarly, Barsam describes the film as arguing that "Jews are criminals;... they have no soul;... they are different in every way;... killing them is not a crime, but a necessity—just as killing rats is a necessity to preserve health and cleanliness." ''Unser Wille und Weg'' (Our Will and Way), a
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
monthly publication aimed at propagandists, provides a rationale for why ''The Eternal Jew'' was made. The author of the essay "The Film of a 2000-Year Rat Migration," who remains anonymous, believes the film shows "a full picture of Jewry" and provides "the best treatment of this parasitic race." The author connects the Jews' migration from the
Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
to
Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
and their following of German colonists to rats traveling as a group, who "even then displayed the same criminal traits that they still displayed". The film is complimented for "its portrayal of the Jews' vulgar methods and the brutality and all-devouring hatred they exhibit when they reach their goal and control finance." The slaughtering method causes the author to question the "so-called Jewish religion", as butchers do their work with grins on their face. In closing, the author states the film will be a valuable tool in the struggle to break the Jews' "power over us. We are the initiators of the fight against world Jewry, which now directs its hate, its brutal greed and destructive will toward us. We must win this battle for ourselves, for Europe, for the world."


Jews as an uncivilized and parasitic people

Richard Taylor describes the basic tenet of the film as arguing that "the Jew is an oriental barbarian who has insinuated himself cleverly into European society, and now exploits it parasitically." This point is emphasized throughout the film, starting from the very opening lines of the film's commentary:
The "civilized" Jews that we know in Germany give us only an incomplete picture of their racial character. This film shows genuine shots of the Polish ghettos. It shows the Jews as they really are, before they conceal themselves behind the mask of the civilized European.
Following this commentary, the film provides a succession of scenes in which Jews are portrayed as an uncivilized, parasitic people with low social standing. The images were mostly shot on site in the
Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...
and other Polish ghettos, showing subjects who were deliberately chosen to be poorly dressed, dirty and who had partially toothless grins. The locations shown are dirty and infested by vermin. Robert Reimer asserts that a central theme of the film is the assertion that "Jews have always lived in the ghettos and in fact they ''choose'' to live this way." According to Reimer, the film asserts that ghettos are "ordinary ndnormal" aspects of Jewish life. Reimer charges that what the film is actually showing is not the normal life of Polish Jewry but rather the "effect of the Nazi administration and the disruption of the lives of millions of Polish Jews." Erik Barnouw describes the
Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...
after the Nazi conquest as a place where "hundreds of thousands of Jews were herded by the
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
conquerors into pockets of indescribable misery." He describes footage shot there as showing "half-starved, unshaven creatures caught in pathetic acts of barter – a pair of socks for a scrap of food." It is scenes such as these that the film presents as showing Jews "in their natural state." The film utilizes a
montage Montage may refer to: Arts and entertainment Filmmaking and films * Montage (filmmaking), a technique in film editing * ''Montage'' (2013 film), a South Korean film Music * Montage (music), or sound collage * ''Montage'' (Block B EP), 201 ...
that juxtaposes these images of ghetto Jews with images of rats to draw an analogy between the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe with the migration of rats. For example, one of the shots shows a pack of rats emerging from a sewer, followed by a shot of a crowd of Jews in a bustling street of the
Łódź Ghetto The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of Ge ...
. Close-ups of those in the crowd reveal sickly, malformed facial features. The narrator states that, as rats are the vermin of the animal kingdom, Jews are the vermin of the human race and similarly spread disease and corruption. Unlike rats, however, the narrator continues, Jews have the uncanny ability to change their appearance and blend into their "human hosts." A scene depicts four bearded men in traditional religious Jewish clothing, then shows them shaved and in modern business suits, while the narrator explains that only a "trained eye" can distinguish their Jewish features.
"Where rats appear, they bring ruin by destroying mankind's goods and foodstuffs. In this way, they spread disease, plague, leprosy, typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, and so on. They are cunning, cowardly and cruel and are found mostly in large packs. Among the animals, they represent the rudiment of an insidious, underground destruction – just like the Jews among human beings."
The film also claims that:
ewish peopleneed other people because they need the goods with which to carry on business. The things that are valued by the creative ''Aryan'' peoples have been reduced by the Jew to the level of a mere piece of merchandise, which he buys and sells but cannot produce himself. He leaves production to the labourers and peasants of the people upon whom he has imposed his presence. The Jews are a race without farmers and without manual labourers, a race of parasites.
According to ''Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany'':
By showing the way in which Jews allegedly insinuate themselves from small-scale to large-scale operations by preying on others, the film returns to its original image of the Jew concealing himself 'behind the mask of the civilised European'. ..According to the film, the Jew presents an insidious, because concealed, threat, and one that is growing and must be brought under control. The message of this part of the commentary is that Jews will always be Jews, and that the 'civilised European' Jew is only a guise for a new and more dangerous forms of parasitic exploitation.


Jews as manipulative


Changing outward appearances

The film also claims that the Jewish people ...
...change their outward appearances when they leave their Polish nests and go out into the rich world. ..When he appears without them, then it is only the keen-eyed amongst us who recognise his racial origins. ..It is true that their fathers and grandfathers still lived in ghettoes, but there is no trace left now in their external appearance. Here in the second and third generation, the Aryanisation has reached its
zenith The zenith (, ) is an imaginary point directly "above" a particular location, on the celestial sphere. "Above" means in the vertical direction (plumb line) opposite to the gravity direction at that location (nadir). The zenith is the "highest" ...
. ..And people lacking in
intuition Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...
allow themselves to be deceived by this mimicry and regard them as being in truth their equals. Therein lies the dreadful danger, for even these 'civilised' Jews remain foreign bodies in the organism of their hosts, no matter how much their outward appearance may correspond to that of their hosts.


Economic impact

The film claims:
"At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews sit at the junction of the world financial markets. They are an international power. Only one percent of the world's population, with the help of their capital they terrorize the world stock exchanges, world opinion, and world politics."
The movie blamed Jews for inflation and unemployment in Germany. It charged that they had crept into all professions through
usury Usury () is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. The term may be used in a moral sense—condemning taking advantage of others' misfortunes—or in a legal sense, where an interest rate is ch ...
,
racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Originally and of ...
and crimes against German assets.
"Out of a thousand workers in Berlin, only two were Jews. For the start of 1933, out of one hundred prosecutors in Berlin 15 were Jews. Out of a hundred judges were 23 Jews. Out of a hundred lawyers 49 Jews. 52 Jews out of a hundred doctors. And out of every hundred of businessmen 60 Jews. The average wealth of Germans was 810 marks each. The average wealth of each Jew amounted to 10,000 marks."
The evidence for these assertions is unstated in the film. The occupational information is found in Germany's June 1933 census, which proves the claims made in the movie to be greatly exaggerated.Margarete Limberg and Hubert Rübsaat, eds., Germans No More: Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933-1938, trans. Alan Nothnagle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 1. In 1933, 5,600 Jewish doctors and 3,030 Jewish lawyers were practicing in Germany, corresponding to 11 percent of doctors and 16 percent of lawyers. Still, an exceptionally large number of successful lawsuits over equal citizenship and rights had been filed in the
Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
, most of them by Jewish lawyers. The Nuremberg Laws specifically forbade German judges from citing any precedents by Jewish jurists and cut off Jewish doctors from reimbursement under public health care insurance. In contrast, during the economic crisis between the end of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and the implementation of the
Nuremberg Laws The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of th ...
, Jews were disproportionately likely to be laid off from the labor market, to the point that 1 out of every 4 Jews had been laid off by 1935. The original set of layoffs also had the effect of concentrating Jewish employment during this period into the professional and self-employed sectors, while post-1933 delicensing and other Nuremberg legislation gradually pushed Jews completely out of professional occupations and into positions such as street peddlers. The reference to average wealth probably used the wealth of the Jewish
Rothschild family The Rothschild family ( , ) is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish family originally from Frankfurt that rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of F ...
as the basis for its calculation. The Rothschild banking family is still believed to have had the largest private fortune in the world during the 19th century, as well as the largest fortune in
modern world The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...
history.''The House of Rothschild: Money's prophets, 1798–1848'', Volume 1, Niall Ferguson, 1999, page 481-85''The Secret Life of the Jazz Baroness'', from The Times 11 April 2009, Rosie Boycott Although the
Creditanstalt The Creditanstalt (sometimes Credit-Anstalt, abbreviated as CA), full original name k. k. priv. Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (), was a major Austrian bank, founded in 1855 in Vienna. From its founding until 1931, th ...
debts were assumed in part by the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family, its bankruptcy was later used by Hitler as an example of how the Jews were responsible for all the economic and social troubles of Germany and the world. The movie goes on to assert that: "The most common expressions in the jargon of international gangsters and criminals stem from
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
words." According to the movie, Jews are likewise disproportionately plentiful in organized crime, where they represent 82% of international crime organizations, and 98% of international prostitution. This Jewish influence is seen as well in the international language used by criminals (see also ''
Rotwelsch Rotwelsch (, ''" beggar's foreign (language)"'') or Gaunersprache ( ''" crook's language"'') also Kochemer Loshn (from Yiddish "", "tongue of the wise") is a secret language, a cant or thieves' argot, spoken by groups (primarily marginalized gr ...
''). The evidence for these blatant assertions is nowhere produced. Insofar as "organized crime" represents lawbreaking other than that forced by the Nuremberg Laws, it has not been corroborated by subsequent research. The film also claims that the Jewish people have some kind of "genetic predisposition towards
barter In trade, barter (derived from ''baretor'') is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists distingu ...
and
haggling In the social sciences, bargaining or haggling is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service debate the price or nature of a transaction. If the bargaining produces agreement on terms, the transaction takes plac ...
", saying that " ewish peoplerush into trade" because it is fitting "with their character and inclination", and that "For the Jew, there is but one object of value – money. How he earns it is a matter of complete indifference to him." It also accuses Jews of passing corruption on to their children by religious means, saying that:
These children see no ideals before them like our own. The egoism of the individual is not used in the service of higher common goals. On the contrary, Jewish racial morality claims, in contrast to ''Aryan'' morality, that the unrestrained egoism of each Jew is a divine law. His religion makes a duty out of treachery and usury.


Jews as abnormal and depraved

In a long sequence of images, the film provides examples to illustrate its claims that Aryan/European culture had been corrupted by Jews. This sequence includes footage of notable figures who had earned
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's wrath, such as physicist and Nobel laureate
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
and
Spartacist uprising The Spartacist uprising (German: ), also known as the January uprising (), was a general strike and the accompanying armed struggles that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the November Revolutio ...
leader
Rosa Luxemburg Rosa Luxemburg (; ; pl, Róża Luksemburg or ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, ...
(erroneously named as one and the same person as anarchist
Emma Goldman Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the ...
) as representatives of so-called "
international Jewry Belief in an international Jewish conspiracy or world Jewish conspiracy has been described as "the most widespread and durable conspiracy theory of the twentieth century" and "one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories". Al ...
". Einstein's image was juxtaposed with a series of images about the supposed Jewish control of the pornography industry. Einstein was characterized as "the relativity Jew, who masks his hatred of Germany behind his obscure pseudo-sciences". Other film clips presented Jewish (or supposedly Jewish) actors from the Weimar era such as
Curt Bois Curt Bois (born Kurt Boas; April 5, 1901 – December 25, 1991) was a German actor with a career spanning over 80 years. He is best remembered for his performances as the pickpocket in ''Casablanca'' (1942) and the poet Homer in ''Wings of Desi ...
,
Fritz Kortner Fritz Kortner (born Fritz Nathan Kohn; 12 May 1892 – 22 July 1970) was an Austrian stage and film actor and theatre director. Life and career Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn into a Jewish family. He studied at the Vienna A ...
,
Peter Lorre Peter Lorre (; born László Löwenstein, ; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before movin ...
, and
Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch (; January 29, 1892November 30, 1947) was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as ...
.
Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...
was also included in this sequence and inaccurately identified as Jewish, possibly as a consequence of his role as the Jewish barber in ''
The Great Dictator ''The Great Dictator'' is a 1940 American anti-war political satire black comedy film written, directed, produced, scored by, and starring British comedian Charlie Chaplin, following the tradition of many of his other films. Having been the onl ...
''. The film includes two scenes from the Hollywood film '' The House of Rothschild'' (1934). The first clip shows
Mayer Rothschild Mayer Amschel Rothschild (23 February 1744 – 19 September 1812; also spelled ''Anschel'') was a German-Jewish banker and the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Referred to as a "founding father of international finance", Rothschild w ...
, a rich man, hiding money and putting on old, shabby clothes in order to fool a corrupt
tax collector A tax collector (also called a taxman) is a person who collects unpaid taxes from other people or corporations. The term could also be applied to those who audit tax returns. Tax collectors are often portrayed as being evil, and in the modern wo ...
. The second shows him speaking to his sons, encouraging them to start an international banking business to take advantage of nations' misfortunes in times of war. The clips were used without permission. The film's narrator asserts that: "the Jew is instinctively interested in everything abnormal and depraved." To illustrate this point, Hippler included a scene from
Fritz Lang Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
's film '' M'' in which the child murderer Hans Beckert (played by
Peter Lorre Peter Lorre (; born László Löwenstein, ; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before movin ...
) makes an impassioned plea to the "jury" of criminals, begging for his life and disclaiming responsibility for his crimes on account of insanity. Beckert shrieks, "... it burns within me. I must go the way I am driven. Who knows what is going on inside me? How I must – not want, must!" According to Sharon Packer, Hitler used this scene to assert that "Jews transmit inheritable criminality and therefore deserve to die."


Degenerate art

The film proceeds to suggest that pictorial art and music have degenerated under Jewish influence, with many spurious examples given.
Degenerate art Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
included works of
abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th ...
as well as those from specific individuals such as
George Grosz George Grosz (; born Georg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objec ...
and
Emil Nolde Emil Nolde (born Hans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German-Danish painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of the ...
, while
degenerate music Degenerate music (german: Entartete Musik, link=no, ) was a label applied in the 1930s by the government of Nazi Germany to certain forms of music that it considered harmful or decadent. The Nazi government's concerns about degenerate music were a ...
included
jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
and so-called ''
Negermusik ''Negermusik'' ("Negro music") was a derogatory term used by the Nazi Party during the Nazi Germany, Third Reich to demonize musical styles that had been invented by black people such as swing music, swing and jazz. The Nazi Party viewed these m ...
'', although here the connection to Jewry is unknown.


Jewish religious practice

After showing how Jews have supposedly been responsible for the decline of Western music, science, art, and commerce, the film presents a scene of a cow being slaughtered for meat by a '' shochet'' (Jewish ritual slaughterer). The scene is prefaced by a warning similar to the one in ''
Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific ex ...
'', warning the squeamish about what is coming next. This long sequence, lasting several minutes, shows
cows Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...
and
sheep Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus ''Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated s ...
in their death throes as they bleed to death. The producers apparently filmed this scene because of Hitler's opposition to
cruelty to animals Cruelty to animals, also called animal abuse, animal neglect or animal cruelty, is the infliction by omission (neglect) or by commission by humans of suffering or harm upon non-human animals. More narrowly, it can be the causing of harm or suf ...
. He had banned
kosher (also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, yi, כּשר), fro ...
slaughter of animals in Germany and felt that such footage would shock the German public. This scene was cut from the version intended for young audiences.
"These images are a clear proof of the cruelty of ''Schächtmethode''. They also reveal the character of a race, their blunt brutality hidden under the guise of religious worship. "


Hitler's Reichstag speech

The film concludes with footage of Hitler's 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech in which he proclaims the well-known statement:
"If international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will not be Bolshevization of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"
The film ends with images of brownshirted SA troops on parade.


Release and reception

In and of itself, the movie did not have much impact on the German public. The film suffered from being released after ''Jud Süß'', which had been wildly popular, perhaps because the antisemitic message was secondary to an engaging period drama. The actors in ''Jud Süß'' were leading German actors of the time. In contrast, ''Der ewige Jude'' only original footage was of Jews in the Polish ghetto and animated maps. All the other footage consisted of stills and archive film clips. Thus, unlike '' Jud Süß'', which was a box-office smash success, ''Der ewige Jude'' was a commercial flop. David Culbert asserts that it is unlikely that there were more than one million paid admissions compared to over 20 million paid admissions to ''Jud Süß''. The film was more known by word-of-mouth descriptions than from people actually viewing it. Some Germans were quoted as saying "We've already seen enough Jewish filth. We don't need to see any more." The film was chiefly screened by party supporters and Nazi organizations like the
Hitler Youth The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. ...
and the SS. Its themes and content made it a topic of discussion by a wider audience that never saw it.
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
invited to screen it for SS-Einsatzgruppen troops headed for the Eastern Front to carry out the "
Final Solution The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
".


Postwar legacy

In 1946, Fritz Hippler was tried for directing ''Der ewige Jude'' but was not found guilty. Hippler contended Joseph Goebbels was the true creator of ''The Eternal Jew'' with Hitler's close supervision. He claimed that Goebbels gave Hippler credit as a reward "for his excellent work in the newsreel department". Fritz Hippler was interviewed in the
Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
-winning program "The Propaganda Battle" in the
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
series ''Walk Through the Twentieth Century'' (1983–1984). In this interview he stated that he regretted being listed as the director of ''The Eternal Jew'' because it resulted in being interrogated by the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
after the war. He thought this was unfair because, in his opinion, he had nothing to do with the killing of Jews. In an interview shown in the
ZDF ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...
documentary series ''Holocaust'' (2000), the 90-year-old Hippler described the film as "the most disgraceful example of antisemitism." The film's narrator,
Harry Giese Harry Giese (2 March 1903 – 20 January 1991) was a German theatre and voice actor born in Magdeburg, Province of Saxony. He is best known for providing voiceovers on German newsreels during the Second World War especially Die Deutsche Woche ...
, went on to narrate other films, but he was associated with this film and other films by the Third Reich and he found less work in the Postwar German cinema of the 1950s and 60s.


Availability

The public distribution and exhibition of the film is prohibited in Germany. The only exception is for use in college classrooms and other academic purposes; however, exhibitors must have formal education in "media science and the history of the
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
", and it can only be screened in a censored version with annotations.


See also

* List of films made in the Third Reich *
Nazism and cinema Nazism created an elaborate system of propaganda, which made use of the new technologies of the 20th century, including cinema. Nazism courted the masses by the means of slogans that were aimed directly at the instincts and emotions of the peopl ...
* ''
The International Jew ''The International Jew'' is a four-volume set of antisemitic booklets or pamphlets originally published and distributed in the early 1920s by the Dearborn Publishing Company, an outlet owned by Henry Ford, the American industrialist and aut ...
'' * Henry Ford § ''The Dearborn Independent'' and antisemitism *
Protocols of the Elders of Zion ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' () or ''The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax was plagiarized from several ...
*
Antisemitic canard Antisemitic tropes, canards, or myths are " sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory towards Judaism as a religion or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since the Middle Ages, such repo ...
*
History of the Jews in Poland The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...


References

Notes Further reading * Hornshøj-Møller, Stig (1995) ''Der ewige Jude: Quellenkritische Analyse eines antisemitischen Propagandafilms'' ("Source-Critical Analysis of an Antisemitic Propaganda Film"),
Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
:Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film *


External links

* *
Shay Hazkani, "Forbidden Films-An Analysis of the Nazi Propaganda Films The Eternal Jew and Jew Suess and Their Influence on the German Public"
Moreshet 5
Still Images of film
via holocaust-history.org


Papers on 'The Eternal Jew' by Stig Hornshoj-Moller

The Eternal Jew – a Blueprint for Genocide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eternal Jew, The 1940 films 1940 documentary films Nazi antisemitic propaganda films Films about Jews and Judaism Films about race and ethnicity German black-and-white films Nazi propaganda films Films directed by Fritz Hippler Wandering Jew Compilation films Censored films 1940 in Judaism