Nazi Propaganda at the Museum

The New York Times' Ed Rothstein recently reviewed an exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum called State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda. The subject is both fascinating and disturbing. In the article, Rothstein relates confronting a black poster emblazoned simply with Hitler's face and name. "It is chilling because we know what that face unleashed."

If you cannot make it down to the USHMM in Washington D.C. to see this exhibition, the Museum of Jewish Heritage has some of the items mentioned in the Times article in its own collection, including a number of propaganda posters, German radios (which were sold cheaply in the Nazi era in order to get the government's hateful message out to as many people as possible), and the children's board game Juden Raus which translates to "Jews out."

Juden Raus is a featured item on the Museum's Meeting Hate with Humanity tour. When I was a Lipper intern and gave tours to high schoolers, I found that this game was the object that struck a chord with the most students. All of them had played lighthearted children's games like Candyland at some point, so they were disturbed to think of children just like them playing a game whose purpose was to evacuate Jews out of a German city and deport them. When I asked them who they thought produced this game, most if not all would answer either "The Nazis" or "Hitler." Learning that the game was produced by an independent German toy company was the moment when many of them realized the depths of the propaganda abounding in the country at the time.