A creepy children's game from the time of Nazi Germany

This is a kind of "monopoly" game whose goal is to quickly collect six "Jewish hats" and bring them to collection points

In preparation for International Holocaust Day, a new exhibition of Wiener Library for the study of the Nazi period and the Holocaust Tel Aviv University presents the horrifying children's game "Jews Out!" [Juden Raus!] produced in Nazi Germany by an unknown company, Guenther and Co., at the end of 1938, probably following "Kristallnacht".

Prof. (Emeritus) Jose Brunner, Academic Director and Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Wiener Library, explains that this is a kind of game of "Monopoly" (today's) whose main goal is to quickly collect six "Jewish hats" from the commercial and residential areas of the city and bring them to the points collection. The first player to reach one of the collection points with the six hats wins. On the game board is written, among other things, the sentence "Go to Palestine!" [“Auf nach Palästina!”].

Prof. Bruner: "There is no doubt that "Jews out!" It is the result of years of incitement and gross anti-Semitism that prevailed in German society in the 30s, to such an extent that someone thought that the deportation of the Jews was a suitable subject for children's play. The game "Jews Out" was considered unusual even at that time, since most children would play games through which they learned about the path of the Nazi Party, when it was founded and how it developed, whereas here it is a game that actually teaches the children to expel the Jews." Prof. Bruner adds that the facts regarding the history of the game are disputed, and some of them even contradict each other. What can be known is that the one who spread the game was Rudolf Fabricius who was a merchant of food products.

Prof. Dina Porat, From the Department of History of the People of Israel Tel Aviv University adds: "During the 30s, children who received education on behalf of the Nazi Party often played games in kindergartens and schools that encouraged identification with the party's institutions. It is worth seeing the game presented in the exhibition in the general context of the material that the children received, such as a children's edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or a book such as "The Poisonous Mushroom" that scares children from slave-holding and scheming Jews and more. This is how an education system worked, the purpose of which was to train young hearts to absorb the ideas that the party advocated, and indeed we saw a difference during the war and the Holocaust between those who received such education from a young age and those who were older."

At the same time, Prof. Bruner adds that although the game is anti-Semitic in nature, and even used the Nazi slogan "Jews out!", it was not welcomed by the Nazi establishment. On December 29, 1938, an article was published in the SS weekly Das Schwarze Korps, in which the game was severely criticized. It is written that the game denigrates the Nazi policy of cleansing Germany of Jews, because it presents hard and systematic work as if it were a game of chance, and in fact it is an orderly and systematic plan that has been put a lot of thought into it. The game was not well received by the German public either, and evidence suggests that there were not many sales.

The game arrived at the Wiener Library during the seventies of the last century, along with the entire archive that was then transferred to Tel Aviv University from London and which includes tens of thousands of documents from the Nazi era. The game immediately caught the attention of the library administrators, and over the years, from time to time, they would bring it out and show it to visitors to the library, most of them academic researchers. But at the same time, it hardly received public resonance, and now the library managers have decided to present it in a new exhibition. As far as the library administrators know, the copy in their possession is one of the only original copies of the game left in the world. Also, in the library's collection you can also find the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps in which the article against the game was published.

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Holocaust Day: Is man's nature evil from his youth? And maybe better than his youth?
• Personal identification tags worn by four children sent to the extermination camp in Sobibor, Poland, were uncovered in an archaeological dig at the site
• Following a visit to the forest where my mother hid: How did the Jews live before and during the Holocaust?
• holocaust in space
• A child's soul in space