Poster of an Orthodox Jew balancing Stalin and 1 billion dollars on a scale
Extent and Medium
overall: Height: 27.750 inches (70.485 cm) | Width: 18.500 inches (46.99 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 poster 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
Anti-Jewish poster issued in German occupied Serbia in the fall of 1941 for the Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition in Belgrade from October 22, 1941, to January 19, 1942. It portrays a large, stereotypical Orthodox Jewish man holding a small scale balancing Joseph Stalin against a stack of US dollars and British pounds. The exhibit focused on the alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic conspiracy to achieve world domination. Jews were portrayed as the source of all evil, which had to be destroyed, along with Jewish controlled countries, such as the Soviet Union and the US, and any outsider groups that opposed Nazi Germany. Yugoslavia was invaded and dismembered by the Axis powers in April 1941. Germany annexed most of Slovenia and placed Serbia under military occupation. The exhibition was organized by the Serbian puppet government of Milan Nedic in collaboration with the German occupiers. This poster is one of more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic visual materials.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
No restrictions on use
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Color offset lithograph poster on light brown paper with a caricature of an oversize, stereotyped, Orthodox Jewish man, dressed in black with a black yarmulke, a large, bulbous nose, white sidelocks, mustache, and long beard, filling the top three-quarters of the poster. He looks greedily at a balance scale held in his right hand. The right scale bowl holds stacks of British pounds, dollar coins, banknotes, and a bag with 1,000,000,000 on it. A black haired, mustached miniature man in a gray/green uniform with a red star, and a holstered gun, Joseph Stalin, stands in the left bowl, looking at the money, holding the scale suspension ropes. At the bottom is a light brown panel with text in Serbian in black and red ink. It is adhered to slightly larger linen backing. For another version of this poster, see 2009.367.2
People
- Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953--Caricatures and cartoons.
Subjects
- Propaganda, Anti-Soviet--Posters--Specimens.
- Antisemitism--Serbia--History--20th century--Posters.
- World War, 1939-1945--Propaganda--Posters.
- Antisemitism in art.
- Anti-Jewish propaganda--Serbia--20th century--Posters--Specimens.
- Antisemitism--Pictorial works.
- Jews--Caricatures and cartoons.
Genre
- Object
- Posters