DER EWIGE JUDE - ein Filmbeitrag zum Problem des Weltjudentums [Main Title]

Metadata


  • Title: DER EWIGE JUDE - ein Filmbeitrag zum Problem des Weltjudentums [Main Title]
  • Film Number: GWY 522
  • Other titles: THE ETERNAL JEW - a film contribution to the problem of World Jewry [Translation]
  • Summary: Nazi racial propaganda compilation of documentary, newsreel and feature film sequences overlaid by virulently anti-Semitic commentary. The film falls broadly into five sections: scenes in the Warsaw Ghetto with the Jews depicted as a race of parasites, dirty in their habits and only interested in trade; the migration of the Jews and their attempts to assimilate with European peoples; the development of Jewish banking interests and their influence on international capitalism; the political and cultural influence of Jews in Germany during the Weimar Republic; attacks on the teaching and practice of the Jewish religion.
  • Description: The film opens with a rolling title - "The civilised Jews we know in Germany give an incomplete picture of their true character. This film includes actual footage from the Polish Ghettos. It shows us the Jews as they really are, before they conceal themselves behind the mask of the civilised European." Reel 1. The film opens with shots of Polish refugees and continues with scenes shot in the Warsaw Ghetto, Poland, October 1939. Shots of the crowded streets, groups of Jewish men looking directly at the camera, commentary - "...we recognise that here lies a plague spot that threatens the health of the Aryan people". Interior shots of a crowded family house (with close-up shots of flies on the walls), brief shots of a group of Jewish men at prayer in a house, shots of a few Jewish men working in the streets clearing rubble and many shots of street selling, shops and bartering, commentary - "They aren't used to hard work, nor do they like it. This isn't helplessness to be pitied but something quite different. The Jews don't want to work but to barter, where they are in their element". Reel 2. Further scenes in the Warsaw Ghetto, Poland, October 1939. More shots of street sellers followed by a montage of creative and physical work contrasted with a brief shot of a Jewish man counting money. Exterior views of small shops, (shop signs "Leon Borgenicht", "Owoce Markus Goldfinger", ".... Schleichkorn", ".... Szmuel Zylberklang") and of large houses and luxurious villas. Montage of shots of goods and agricultural production, commentary - "things which are valued by the creative Aryan peoples have been reduced by the Jew to the level of a mere piece of merchandise, which he buys and sells but cannot produce himself". The film then deals with the migration of the Jews. A view through an archway in the Warsaw Ghetto cuts to street scenes in Jerusalem and shots of the Wailing Wall. Animated map charting the Jewish migrations from Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the Mediterranean, North Africa, Spain, France, England, Germany, Poland, Russia, Asia, Africa and America, commentary - "the ultimate mongrelised Jew from the oriental Near Eastern race with Negroid admixture - differing from us Europeans, coming as we do from quite different racial elements, in body and above all in soul". Close-ups of several Jewish men. Reel 3. A similar animated map compares the wanderings of the Jews to the mass migrations of the rat from Asia to Europe, Africa and America. Close-up shot of a mass of rats, rats in grain sacks, rats coming up out of a drain, rats leaping over foodstuffs and large numbers of rats running towards the camera, commentary "In the animal world they represent craftiness and underground destruction - no different from the Jews among mankind". More shots of Jewish men in the Warsaw Ghetto. Studio shots and exterior shots of a variety of Jewish men, commentary - "These shots refute impressively the liberalistic theories of equality of all those who bear a human face. Of course they change their outward appearance when they leave their Polish nests to go out into the rich world ". Studio shots of six young Jewish men, firstly bearded wearing traditional clothing and then clean-shaven wearing European clothes. Unidentified feature film footage of a social gathering in a wealthy private house. Still photograph of Baron Maurice de Rothschild. Still photograph of Major James de Rothschild. Extended extract from the feature film "The House of Rothschild" showing the Rothschilds hiding their wealth and feigning poverty in an attempt to deceive tax collectors. Reel 4. Another extract from the feature film "The House of Rothschild" showing Rothschild on his deathbed advising his sons to set up banks in the various European cities and by credit arrangements between their various banks controlling the transfer of money. Animated diagram shows the dispersal of the five sons. Animated diagram illustrates the power and influence of Jewish banking families throughout Europe, Africa and America, commentary - "with their capital they terrorise the world stock exchange, world opinion and world politics". American newsreel footage of New York City and inside the New York Stock Exchange, which is noted as the centre of Jewish power. A montage of still photographs of influential Jewish Americans - Bernard Baruch, Otto Kahn, Felix Warburg, Mortimer Schiff, Samuel Untermeyer, Professor Felix Frankfurter, Herbert Lehmann, Fiorello H La Guardia and Henry Morgenthau. Film of the former French Prime Minister Léon Blum. Footage of Leslie Hore-Belisha reviewing British troops. Montage of images of seats of government, including the Houses of Parliament, the White House and the Reichstag, dissolving to an image of the dome of a synagogue topped with the Star of David. Title "NOVEMBER 1918", commentary - "Remember those tragic days, when Germany lay helpless" over sequences from German newsreels, shots of soldiers and civilians in the Unter den Linden, in front of the Brandenburg Gate and in the Wilhelmstrasse (Berlin). Title "Wahlen zur Nationalversammlung" (Elections to the National Assembly". Newsreel footage of the election for the Weimar National Assembly 1919, crowds in the streets and queuing to vote, commentary - "Then the Jews seized their chance". Footage of prominent Jews, Otto Landsberger, Philip Scheidemann, Paul Hirsch, Georg Bernhard, Hugo Preuss, Walther Rathenau, Rudolf Hilferding and Bernhard Isidor Weiss. German newsreel footage of street scenes, public meetings and demonstrations. Brief shot of the Reichstag followed by still photographs of communist Jews, Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lasalle-Wolfson, Rosa Luxemburg and Eugen Levine-Nissen (Levine). Reel 5 Animated diagram illustrating the population of Germany, commentary - "for every thousand struggling Germans there were ten Jews, who were always united in one common aim in genuine or feigned rivalry - collective exploitation of the Germans". The animation diagrams illustrate the number of professional occupations - judges, lawyers, prosecutors, doctors - dominated by Jews in 1933; the commentary notes comparative average wages. "While millions of native Germans were unemployed and in distress, immigrant Jews had in a few years gained fantastic fortunes". Film of Germans living in make-shift homes and women scavenging for coal. Title "Inflation": footage of bank notes followed by stills of notorious Jewish businessmen Willy and Leo Sklarek, Iwan Kutisker, Julius Barmat, Franz von Mendelssohn and Ludwig Katzenellenbogen. Film of classical sculptures, and famous paintings - Botticelli's "Venus", Michelangelo's "Creation" and Cranach's "Madonna under the apple tree". Commentary - "Jews are at their most dangerous when they meddle in a people's culture, religion and art". Film of modern "degenerate" art including paintings by Nolde ("The Lost Paradise"), F F Kaiser, George Grosz, Paul Kleinschmidt and Otto Dix, woodcuts and sculptures. Film of primitive art sculptures cuts to brief images of black entertainers. Still photographs of prominent Jews from the Weimar period - Alfred Kerr, Kurt Tucholsky and Magnus Hirschfeld. Reel 6 Extract from "Dimitri Karamazov - Murderer". Commentary - "The Jew is interested instinctively in all that is abnormal and depraved". Extracts from "M" with the commentary - " The Jew Lorre in the role of a child murderer. Not the murderer but the victim is guilty, according to this film". This section continues with images of culturally prominent Jews, who are, according to the narration, portrayed as distinguished representatives of German art and culture - the singer Richard Tauber, the film producer Ernst Lubitsch and the writer Emil Ludwig Cohn. Film of jubilant reception of Charlie Chaplin in Berlin in 1927 with the commentary - "the German public unsuspectingly applauded the foreign Jew, the deadly enemy of their race". Short montage of religious paintings and drawings of Biblical figures with the commentary - "Hebrews of Biblical history could not have looked like this. We must correct our historical picture". Scenes from a Jewish cultural film dealing with the Jewish festival of Purim - showing a family feast for the celebration of Purim. Reel 7 Commentary "To understand these customs, one must look more closely at the laws and teachings of the Jewish race". Scenes in a Jewish school, shots of the school boys seated in their classroom reading aloud and listening to their Rabbi teacher. Shots of young men and a Rabbi seated around a table in a Talmud school. Close-up shots of the faces of various young men. Commentary - "the Rabbis, these masters of art and hypocrisy, are not peaceful theologians but political educators". Scenes in a large crowded synagogue (10 October 1939, Lodz, Poland) various shots of Jewish men at prayer and the Cantor singing. Shots of two men seated in the pews, who are, according to the commentary, conducting business during the religious service. The Torah roll. Panning shot over the congregation in the synagogue. The Torah roll is taken to the pulpit. Unrolling of the Torah roll. More views over the congregation in the synagogue. The commentary quotes from various passages of the Torah over views of numerous Jewish men at prayer. Reel 8 More shots of Jewish men at prayer in a Synagogue, commentary - "That is no religion and no religious service, that is a conspiracy against all non-Jews of a cunning, unhealthy, contaminated race, against the health of the Aryan people and against their moral laws." Captions - "One of the most instructive customs of the Jewish so-called religion is the slaughter of animals. The following pictures are genuine. They are among the most horrifying that a camera has ever taken. We are showing them in spite of this, without regard for objections on the ground of taste. Because more important than all objections is the fact that our people should know the truth about Judaism. Sensitive compatriots are advised not to look at the following pictures". Scenes of Kosher animal slaughter (11 October 1939, Lodz, Poland) - a cow tethered to a wooden fence, close-up of a Jewish man holding a knife, the cow is led into the slaughter house followed by several Jewish men holding knives, the cow's legs are bound and it is brought to the ground, its throat is then cut. Sustained close-up shots of death of the animal. (There is neither commentary nor sound effects over these scenes, only natural sound.) Brief close-up shots of the faces of the Jewish men in the slaughter-house. Brief shots of another cow slaughtered in the same way. Commentary - "Jewish law has no love and regard for animals in the Germanic sense. Jews refuse to put a suffering animal out of its misery". Shots of German newspaper articles dealing with Nazi attempts to forbid the Kosher slaughter of animals. Shots of a large herd of cows, calves, sheep and lambs. Scenes of the Kosher slaughter of sheep (11 October 1939, Lodz, Poland) - sheep are brought into a slaughter house, laid on wooden cradles and have their throats cut. An unbound cow is brought to the ground and has its throat cut, it then raises itself and stumbles around, bleeding profusely, before being pulled to the ground again. Commentary - "These picture prove the cruelty of this form of slaughter. It reveals the character of a race which conceals its brutality beneath a cloak of pious religious practices". Commentary - "As soon as the Führer assumed power, a law passed on 21 April 1933 prohibited this Jewish form of slaughter". The narration then mentions other anti-Jewish legislation, the Law relating to German citizenship, 14 November 1935, the Law Concerning the Protection of German honour and German blood, 15 September 1935, and the Law Concerning the Act of Expiation by German Jews, 12 November 1938. Commentary - "Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, Germany has raised the battle flag of war against the eternal Jew". The final section of the film begins with newsreel footage of Adolf Hitler addressing the Reichstag at the Kroll Opera House, Berlin, on 30 January 1939: "Europe cannot find peace until the Jewish question is solved.....". Shots of Aryan youth including brief footage from "Triumph des Willens" (Triumph of the Will) with commentary - "The eternal law of nature, to keep one's race pure, is the legacy which the National Socialist movement bequeaths to the German people forever. It is with this resolve that the united German people marches on into the future". The film ends with shots of marching German troops and the Nazi flag.
  • Access Conditions: IWM-GERMAN Attribution: IWM – GWY 522
  • Featured Period: 1939-1945
  • Production Date: 1940
  • Production Country: Germany
  • Production Details: Deutsche Filmherstellungs und Verwertungs GmbH (DFG) (Production company) Hippler, Fritz (Production individual) Goebbels, Paul Joseph1897-10-291945-05-01Joseph Goebbels was one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates. He became a member of the Nazi party in 1924 and was appointed regional party leader in Berlin. He was appointed Propaganda Minister in 1933. He was Chancellor of Germany for just one day, committing suicide the day following Hitler. (Production individual) Friedl, Franz R (Production individual) Endrejat, Albert (Production individual) Hafner, Albert (Production individual) Hafner, Anton (Production individual) Hartmann, R (Production individual) Havemann, Robert (Production individual) Heere, Friedrich Carl (Production individual) Kluth, Heinz (Production individual) Stoll, Erich (Production individual) Winterfeld, Hans Eberhard (Production individual) Schiller, Hans Dieter (Production individual) Baumeister, Albert (Production individual) Taubert, Eberhard (Dr) (Production individual) Noldan, Svend (Production individual) Giese, Harry (Production cast)
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  • Physical Characteristics: Colour format: B&W Sound format: Sound Soundtrack language: German Title language: English Subtitle language: German
  • Technical Details: Format: 35mm Number of items/reels/tapes: 8 Footage: 6028 ft; Running time: 65 mins
  • Notes: Film premiered on 28th November 1940 UFA Palast-am-Zoo, Berlin. Dr Fritz Hippler was the Reichfilmintendant (Superintendent of Film) and Head of the Film Department in the German Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment 1940. Dr Eberhard Taubert worked at the German Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question - an archive for anti-Semitic materials. French version released under the title "Le Péril Juif". Dutch version released under the title "De eewige Jood". The scenes in Warsaw, Poland were filmed by German Army cameraman, Heinz Kluth, October 1939. The scenes in Lodz, Poland - exterior scenes, the synagogue sequence and the Kosher animal slaughter scenes - were shot by Hippler and his crew (Winterfeld, Havemann, Anton Hafner, Heere and Albert Hafner) on 10 -13 October 1939. The film includes sequences from several feature films including "Tartuffe" (F W Murnau 1925), "Dimitri Karamazov - Murderer" (Fedor Ozep 1931), "M" (Fritz Lang 1932) and "The House of Rothschild" (Alfred Werker 1934). Peter Lorre starred in the Fritz Lang film "M". The sequences from "The House of Rothschild" have an English soundtrack with German subtitles. The film also includes American newsreel footage, German newsreel footage and footage from "Triumph des Willens" (Triumph of the Will) 1935, IWM film ref GWY 533. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is played over the footage of classic sculptures and great master paintings in Reel 5 and over the shots of the Biblical paintings in Reel 6. Purim is celebrated on the 14th or 15th day of Adar and commemorates the historic slaughter of anti-Semitic Persians. During the celebrations Jews are required to hear the reading from the book of Esther (Megillah) and eat and drink until they cannot tell the difference between the "cursed be Haman" and "blessed be Mordecai". Stig Hornshoj-Moller published analysis of this film (see References) notes a brief sequence showing still photographs of David Frankfurter and Herschel Grynszpan at the end of Reel 4 - this short sequence is missing from the Imperial War Museum's copy.
  • Link to IWM Collections page:

    GWY 522

  • Related IWM Collections Objects:

    LOC/GWY/002/003 (GWY 522: The Eternal Jew)
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