Illustration of a Jew urging a Soviet soldier to whip a woman
Extent and Medium
overall: Height: 11.250 inches (28.575 cm) | Width: 8.000 inches (20.32 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 illustration 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
Antisemitic, anti-Soviet German propaganda illustration distributed in contested Polish and Ukrainian war zones between 1941 and 1944. It was removed from a periodical. On one side is an illustration of an Orthodox Jew whispering in the ear of a savage looking Soviet soldier clutching a struggling woman in his arm. On the other side is a photograph of 4 distraught women displaced and wounded by the war. In September 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and divided Poland, which included Ukraine, per the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. On June 22, 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union. To frighten and gain the support of the local populations, Germany produced graphic propaganda showing Soviets and Jews committing horrible acts against civilians, especially children and women. It also emphasized the Soviet Union’s role as an aggressor nation advancing the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy to control the world. This illustraiotn is one of more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of anti-Semitic visual materials.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
No restrictions on use
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Double sided illustration removed from a periodical. On one side is a drawing in black, gray, and red of a soldier in a cap with a visor and the red Soviet star twisting a 5 tailed whip. His face is savage and blank, with squinting eyes, hollow cheeks, and gaping mouth with sparse teeth. He holds a screaming, wide-eyed, barefoot woman in a tattered dress against his left side as she struggles to push away. Behind his right shoulder, a man in a yarmulke with stringy sidelocks and a hooked nose shields his fleshy lips with his hand as he tells the soldier what to do. There is Ukrainian text at the bottom. On the back is a black and white photograph of 3 women in civilian clothing huddled close together on the ground, with a fourth seated behind them with a confused look. There is a caption in Ukrainian in the upper right.
Subjects
- Anti-Jewish propaganda--Germany--20th century.
- World War, 1939-1945--Propaganda.
- Antisemitism--Germany--History--20th century.
- Antisemitism--Pictorial works.
- Nazi propaganda.
- Antisemitism in art.
- Jews--Caricatures and cartoons.
- Soldiers--Caricatures and cartoons.
- Propaganda, Anti-Soviet--Germany.
Genre
- Art
- Object