Is Anti-Semitism a Thing of the past? - Part I

By Edward Rothstein

The 1000-Reichsmark bills on display at the New-York Historical Society’s “Anti-Semitism 1919-1939” exhibition seem almost unused, fresh from the 1922 German mint, probably because rampant inflation quickly made them worthless. That also made them ripe for resurrection by the Nazis 10 years later, when they were overprinted with campaign slogans, swastikas and caricatures. Stamped over one bill’s original engraving, Gothic German text proclaims: “The Jew takes our Gold, Silver and Bacon [Speck], and leaves us with this crap [Dreck].” The Dreck—Weimar’s worthless currency—is evidence of the Jews’ nefarious powers. “Come to Hitler,” the recycled banknotes urge.

Another form of currency is also displayed at this compact but powerful exhibition of more than 50 German artifacts: a five-Reichsmark “currency conversion note” issued between 1933 and 1935. Soon after Adolf Hitler took power, Jews were dismissed from the civil service, Jewish businesses were boycotted and other restrictions were imposed: As the exhibition’s catalog tells us, the Nazis saw this as Wiedergutmachung —making good again—reparations for Judaic evils done to Germany. Jews emigrating surrendered German currency in exchange for these notes, supposedly good for later conversion into foreign currencies. Only they weren’t. Thus, the Jew who made currency worthless got worthless currency in return. Such was Nazi Wiedergutmachung.

But what do these unusual bills demonstrate about the nature of Nazi anti-Semitism? Is there any connection between the objects in this exhibition and contemporary Jew hatred, which is gaining respectability? This is not a simple matter, because the exhibition is so specific to its time and place. That is how it first must be understood. These artifacts were all acquired by Kenneth W. Rendell for the Museum of World War II he has established in Boston, which is planning an expansive new building. They trace, as the exhibition puts it, the “incremental stages by which anti-Semitism moved from ideology to state policy and finally, to war.”

So the exhibition’s first item is a broadside announcing the signing of the Versailles treaty on June 28, 1919—a poster on which the young Hitler wrote a comment that the treaty was a surrender to “the Jewish dictate”; Jews, he declared, must “leave Germany.” Then we see 1920s broadsides for Nazi rallies, a children’s book by a 21-year-old kindergarten teacher warning about Jews, and the 1935 Nuremberg laws codifying anti-Semitism. The last artifacts are six handwritten pages: Hitler’s notes for his 1939 Reichstag speech in which he foretold “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

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Nazi analogies are too regularly invoked to simplify argument; and anti-Semitism is too often generalized, treated as another variety of racism. Instead, I am struck by how singular anti-Semitism is, how cunning the Nazi use of it was, and how different it is from racism, with which it is often confused. Of course, the Nazis calculatedly turned Judaism into a racial matter. The Nuremberg Laws led to genealogical charts, like one here, on which Germans traced their bloodlines to guarantee freedom from Jewish taint.

(snip)

But if race can be an element of anti-Semitism, it is not the main point. For the Nazis it was an indicator of connection and collusion. Is there any other form of group hatred so preoccupied with conspiracy? The Jew, in this view, has hidden powers. The Jew is capable of imposing the Versailles treaty, devaluing currency and manipulating commerce. In medieval folklore, the Jew is close to being a vampire, prepared to feed on the circulatory system of the body politic. And what is that circulatory system? Money. That is also where the Nazis focused—before turning more horrific attention to blood.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-semitism-1919-1939-and-stolen-heart-the-theft-of-jewish-property-in-berlins-historic-city-center-1933-1945-reviews-1463002058