Linda Dunn

The Fredonia Shakespeare Club met recently at the home of Linda Dunn where she presented her paper, “Anti-Semitism in Children’s Literature.”

Her report noted: “One must be knowledgeable of the long history of anti-Semitism, the many libels made against Jews over the centuries to recognize stereotypes found in old folk literature. In the first century CE Apion, a Greek lawyer in Alexandria, Egypt claimed that once a year Jews kidnapped a Greek to be sacrificed to their deity. Apion never cited a specific example of such murder. He wrote in vague, general terms.

In Medieval Europe and later, Jews were denied ownership of land and property, denied entry to craft guilds and encouraged to take up money lending which scripture prohibited to Christians. The characters of Fagin in Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” and Shakespeare’s Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” are familiar Jewish stereotypes. We don’t usually think of blatant anti-Semitism written for the very young, yet an illustrated Old Mother Goose nursery rhyme tells of a rascally Jew cheating a boy named Jack out of his gold egg, and later beating Jack. This is one of more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal collection of anti-Semitic visual materials at the U.S. Holocaust Museum.” European folklore often characterizes Jews as the malevolent “other.” Ava Reid in her article On Fairy Tale Retellings asks, “How can one read Hansel & Gretel and be ignorant of the knowledge that beginning in the high Middle ages Jews were accused of kidnapping and eating Christian children.” (Similar libels were made against early Christians by pagans, who misunderstood the Eucharist. ) Accusations of devil worship and themes of blood libel often connected Jews to witches and even the peaked witch hat may trace its origin to headwear Jews were forced to wear to identify themselves.”

Roald Dahl in his 1983 novel, The Witches, created a cast of hook-nosed women (the stereotypical Jewish nose) who can literally print oney and like to kidnap and murder children. Before he died in 1990 he publicly said, “I’m certainly anti-Israel and have become anti-Semitic.”

“The Jew in the Thorn’s,” by the brothers Grimm, depicts a youth with a fiddle that makes everyone dance. The youth tortures a Jewish man walking in the thorn bush by making him dance until he is bloodied. To stop the torture the man offers him a large sum of money. After the boy is paid, he accuses the Jewish man of stealing the money and the man is hanged. “This is perhaps the most explicitly anti-Semitic of the Grimm Brothers’ tales,” writes Reid, “but not the only story that villainizes Jewishness. Indeed, anti-Semitic attitudes are woven through their stories, both reflecting and reinforcing popular attitudes of the time. Caitlin Hewitt White characterizes the Brothers Grimm as active participants in a “German romantic nationalist project that aimed to construct a central German identity by racializing “Others”. Considering this, it’s perhaps no coincidence that Nazis were able to use the Grimm’s stories as key propaganda tools for Aryan supremacy.”

“In 1938 the publishers of the intensely anti-Semitic Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer released a children’s book titled Der Gilpitz or “The Poisonous Mushroom”. The book was designed to teach children that Jewish people were a threat to Germany and could not be part of the “national community.” The book compares German Jews to a poisonous mushroom hidden among the other mushrooms that it may resemble, but the poisonous one carries great danger for those who come in contact with it. This was one of the first and most well known examples of popular children’s literature that transmitted Nazi racial ideology.” The book was popular and appeared in four printed editions.

The last three anti-Semitic children’s books published by Streicher’s publishing house compared Jews to unpleasant forms of animal life. The books were intended for small children. Three of their stories end with calls to kill the Jews.