A new exhibition at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Nazi Era and the Holocaust at Tel Aviv University is featuring the appalling children’s board game “Jews out!” (Juden Raus!).
The game, manufactured in Nazi Germany by an obscure company called Guenther and Co., is likely to have been out on sale at the end of 1938, following the events of Kristallnacht.
In the board game, players are tasked with collecting six ‘Jew hats’ from Jewish residential and commercial areas in the city. The first player to bring them to one of the roundup spots wins the game.
One of the captions on the board reads “Go to Palestine!” (Auf nach Palästina!).
Prof. Emeritus José Brunner, the Academic Director and Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Wiener Library, says that the game was a clear sign that antismetic acts against the Jews was at every age of German society.
“‘Jews Out!’ is clearly the outcome of years of blatant incitement and antisemitism which prevailed in German society in the 1930’s – so much so that someone got the idea that driving out the Jews was a suitable theme for a children’s game.”
Interestingly enough, the game was not as popular as one might perceive for that time. Despite going on sale at the peak of antisemitic acts and sentiment in Nazi Germany, Prof. Brunner says the game was not well-received by the Nazi establishment.
In an article published in the SS weekly Das Schwarze Korps on December 29, 1938, the writers criticized the game, claiming that the game was disrespectful to the policy of cleansing Germany of Jews, because it presented systematic planning and execution as a game of chance, instead of a methodical plan.
Tel Aviv University received the game in the 1970s together with the entire Wiener archive from London, containing tens of thousands of documents from the Nazi period.
The Library’s collection also includes the SS paper Das Schwarze Korps, where criticism of the game was published in 1938. –i24 News
