Poster of a caricatured Jew fiddling and dancing on human bones
Extent and Medium
overall: Height: 27.625 inches (70.168 cm) | Width: 19.000 inches (48.26 cm)
Creator(s)
- Peter Ehrenthal (Compiler)
Biographical History
The Katz Ehrenthal Collection is a collection of more than 900 objects depicting Jews and antisemitic and anti-Jewish propaganda from the medieval to the modern era, in Europe, Russia, and the United States. The collection was amassed by Peter Ehrenthal, a Romanian Holocaust survivor, to document the pervasive history of anti-Jewish hatred in Western art, politics and popular culture. It includes crude folk art as well as pieces created by Europe's finest craftsmen, prints and periodical illustrations, posters, paintings, decorative art, and toys and everyday household items decorated with depictions of stereotypical Jewish figures.
Archival History
The poster was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016 by the Katz Family.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Katz Family
Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Scope and Content
Anti-Jewish poster issued in German occupied Serbia in the fall of 1941 for the Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition in Belgrade from October 22, 1941, to January 19, 1942. It depicts a grotesquely caricatured Jewish man dancing ecstatically on a huge pile of broken skeletons while playing a violin. The exhibit focused on the alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic conspiracy to achieve world domination. Jews were portrayed as the source of all evil, which had to be destroyed, along with Jewish controlled countries, such as the Soviet Union and the US, and any outsider groups that opposed Nazi Germany. Yugoslavia was invaded and dismembered by the Axis powers in April 1941. Germany annexed most of Slovenia and placed Serbia under military occupation. The exhibition was organized by the Serbian puppet government of Milan Nedic in collaboration with the German occupiers. This poster is one of more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic visual materials.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
No restrictions on use
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Offset color lithograph poster on paper with a gradient red-orange background in the upper half and a black background in the lower. Filling the top is an oversized caricature of a Jewish man wearing a skull cap and a long black garment with light red shading. He holds a violin under his chin that he plays with the bow in his right hand. He looks gloatingly downwards; his face is excited, his eyes bulge from the sockets, and his nose is disproportionately large for his already exaggerated features. He has fleshy, protruding lips, a long beard, and peyot (side curls). He is dancing on a pile of disarticulated white human bones, including several skulls. There are 3 lines of Serbian text across the center. See 2007.351.2 for another version of this poster.
Subjects
- Antisemitism--Pictorial works.
- Anti-Jewish propaganda--Serbia--20th century--Posters--Specimens.
- Antisemitism--Serbia--History--20th century--Posters.
- Antisemitism in art.
- World War, 1939-1945--Propaganda--Posters.
- Jews--Caricatures and cartoons.
Genre
- Posters
- Object