'Their message is urgent': the Holocaust survivor and his 7,000 pieces of antisemitic propaganda

[Behind the Aegis]

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!!

The drawing is detailed, dramatic and disgusting. Called The Jew, Universal Enemy, it shows Christ on the cross and churches in flames, overseen by a sinister, red-lipped, voracious face. Philipp Rupprecht, better known as Fips, composed this caricature for the notorious Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer in 1937. He also illustrated a 1938 children’s book Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), intended to educate young Germans about the Jewish menace.

Rupprecht was sentenced to 10 years hard labour after the war. His work is among 150 pieces of antisemitic propaganda – posters, drawings and objects – on show at the Caen-Normandy Memorial Museum, in an exhibition called Heinous Cartoons 1886-1945: The Antisemitic Corrosion in Europe. They depict sinister, red-faced, obese capitalists smoking cigars on the backs of oppressed workers. They show grotesque communists clamping chains on a suffering Aryan. They portray Jews as rats and vermin. As the dates in the title suggest, the exhibition chronicles how anti-semitism grew at the end of the 19th century and reached a horrible culmination in the Holocaust.

The works all come from private collection of Arthur Langerman, a Holocaust survivor. Born in Antwerp in 1942, at the age of two he was placed in an orphanage by the SS after his father and mother were sent to Auschwitz. Although his father perished, his mother survived and recovered her son, but never spoke to him about her wartime suffering. Langerman went on to found a successful diamond dealership, specialising in coloured gems.

The trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 jolted him awake to the horrors of the Holocaust. Fascinated, and finding a strong desire to understand, he began collecting antisemitic objects. Today, he has assembled some 7,000 pieces, including postcards, posters and paintings, not to mention dozens of wooden figurines from Strasbourg. At the end of the 19th century, these intricately carved images of grotesquely bearded, disfigured representations of Jewish peddlers and rabbis were popular in eastern France – an example of how hatred of Jews had for centuries pervaded western art, politics and popular culture, from fine arts and crafts for the elite to everyday toys and knick-knacks.

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[TEB]

1. I just wanted to say this and it may be a long post

In 1985 I was 18 year old serving in infantry battalion in west Germany and we were loaded on buses and taken to dacahu for a tour , we were in civilian clothes on the bus ride there we were all joking laughing really not understanding what we were about to experience, to us it was a day off from garrison duty. The bus ride home was very somber and doing the tour I as many of my close friends cried openly . My platoon sergeant who was a lrrp 2 tours in Vietnam a fine nco I saw tears in his eyes . Then later I only remember it was winter I was sitting in pub and a older gentleman reached for his cigarettes and his sleeved moved up his arm. And he had a tattoo from the camps by this time my German was fairly decent as he spoke no English and over buying him several beers I asked him how he could live amongst the people that did this to him and he replied in life you need to learn to forgive ,to add he was Russian and a displaced refugee after ww 2 .and he did not want to go back to stalins paradise he had quite sense of humor. When we were not training and had time off I would go back to that pub to seek him out I never met him again but the encounter that we had I still remember him.

[Iris]

3. That's a powerful story. Thanks for sharing it.

[still_one]

2. The article asks can any of these works really be called art? I would reword the question

can works of hate be considered art?

I would agree with the museum director, they are a historical record, but not a work of art. Only a troubled mind would say they are a work of art.

[EllieBC]

4. This is the question without answer.

The whole "what is art?".

I think something can be art and can be horrifying and disturbing especially when it's part of a time we should never forget.