South Pacific made its debut in April of 1949, almost four years after World War II ended. In a moving scene where prejudice shatters the possibility of happiness, Lt. Cable and De Becque reflect upon the nature of prejudice and reach the conclusion that intolerance is something that must be carefully taught. That the Nazis subscribed to this belief is evident from the manner in which the Jewish problem was incorporated into the instruction of the young. Anti-semitism was the overwhelming topic in every school curriculum. Indeed, the propaganda picture books published by Der Stürmer, the organ responsible for the dissemination of many of the anti-semitic publications during the Hitler years, demonstrate that anti-semitism was taught before children "were six or seven or eight."
No single target of nazification took higher priority than Germany's young. By 1937, 97% of all teachers belonged to the National Socialist Teachers' Union. Every member of this union had to submit an ancestry table in triplicate with official documents of proof. Courses and textbooks in Nazi schools reflected the aims of Hitler. Of the topics that teachers were required to treat, the most important was racial theory and, by extension, the Jewish problem. In The National Socialist Essence of Education, a German educator wrote that mathematics was "Aryan spiritual property; .. an expression of the nordic fighting spirit, of the nordic struggle for the supremacy of the world..." An example of racial propaganda in a math problem is the following: "The Jews are aliens in Germany--in 1933 there were 66,060,000 inhabitants in the German Reich, of whom 499,682 were Jews. What is the per cent of aliens?"
In the course of my discussion, I shall first describe the Jewish problem within the Nazi curriculum as it appears in Die Judenfrage im Unterricht (The Jewish Question in Classroom Instruction) and then comment upon the following propaganda picture books that targeted young children: Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid (Don't Trust A Fox in A Green Meadow Or the Oath of A Jew); Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom); and Der Pudelmopsdachelpinscher (The Poodle-Pug-Dachshund-Pincher).
In the introduction to Die Judenfrage im Unterricht, which was published in 1937 by Der Stürmer, Julius Striecher made the following statement: "The National Socialist state requires its teachers to teach German children racial theory. For the German people, racial theory means the Jewish problem." The teacher's manual on the Jewish problem maintains that German children have an inborn aversion to Jews that is intensified by references made to Jews in the newspapers, conversations, and songs sung by members of the SA and HJ. Intermarriage between Germans and Jews is portrayed as unnatural because it does not follow the Nazi perversion of the natural biological order, which does not allow for intermixing. Storks mate with storks; swallows mate with swallows, etc. The Nuremberg Laws are depicted as a return to the natural order that God intended, and the Jew is thus shown as a threat to God's order.
From this point, the projection of the Jew as an enemy of the German people is a quick and easy step. He is conveyed as an infiltrator, who, upon gaining entry into German society, has usurped the political and economic power of Germany and focused his attention upon the destruction of the German people. Because the Jew is deemed such a threat to German society, the Nuremberg Laws are viewed as a justifiable means of self-defense. In order to make the status of the Jew as a deadly enemy of everything German as concrete as possible to German children, the teacher's guide suggests that pictures of Jews (which, of course, are ugly or distorted) be posted on the board next to pictures of the ideal German type. From the visual differences, other differences are inferred. "The Jews walk differently than we do. They have flat feet. They have longer arms than we do. They speak differently than we do."
From physical differences, it is an easy jump to more important differences. 
The thoughts, feelings, and actions of the Jew are presented as a contradiction and threat to German morality. In contrast to the honest German farmer or worker, the Jew is depicted as someone who lives off the sweat of others by his swindling activities as a lawyer, a merchant, or a banker, whose god is money. The Jew as a swindler is shown in the following picture by a twelve-year-old girl. In the drawing, the Jewish livestock dealer's attention appears focused on the bag of money; his clothes are tattered and he is ill-kempt. The German farmer, by contrast, although giving the appearance of being exhausted, is adequately groomed. Finally, being Jewish is, by extension, a Christ-killer and is, therefore, deemed a crime. Jesus is viewed as a war hero who waged war against the Jews until he was killed by them. Children were provided with slogans to learn and recite such as: "Judas the Jew betrayed Jesus the German to the Jews."
The thoughts, feelings, and actions of the Jew are presented as a contradiction and threat to German morality. In contrast to the honest German farmer or worker, the Jew is depicted as someone who lives off the sweat of others by his swindling activities as a lawyer, a merchant, or a banker, whose god is money. The Jew as a swindler is shown in the following picture by a twelve-year-old girl. In the drawing, the Jewish livestock dealer's attention appears focused on the bag of money; his clothes are tattered and he is ill-kempt. The German farmer, by contrast, although giving the appearance of being exhausted, is adequately groomed. Finally, being Jewish is, by extension, a Christ-killer and is, therefore, deemed a crime. Jesus is viewed as a war hero who waged war against the Jews until he was killed by them. Children were provided with slogans to learn and recite such as: "Judas the Jew betrayed Jesus the German to the Jews."
The teacher's guide concludes with a version of world history that implicates Jews in the destruction of major civilizations such as: Egypt, Persia, and Rome. Among those listed as great thinkers, whose statements about the Jews are mentioned with great admiration, the most cited and admired is Adolf Hitler. The next to the last page of this teacher's manual is an admonition against intermarriage between Germans and Jews. In another drawing, a thirteen-year-old German girl shows a Jewish man as a lecher, intent upon seducing a young German girl ; the young victim so ably defends herself that the Jewish man backs away. This picture draws attention to the Nazi necessity for and justification of the Nuremberg Laws, which are held up as a major defense against Jewish infiltration into and destruction of the German people. In summary, the Nazi curriculum sought to instill the image of the Jew as something less than human that represented the antithesis of both the natural order and the divine order; something that was at once unnatural and immoral and, therefore, posed a danger to the very existence of moral German society.The image of the Jew as something less than human, unnatural and immoral recurs throughout the Nazi propaganda picture storybooks for young children. Around the age of six, children were given primers, whose content focused upon camp life, marching, martial drums, boys growing up to be soldiers, etc. Even at this young age, it is obvious that as one principal of a German academic high school wrote: "Education in relation to weapons... is no special branch of general education; rather it is, in point of fact, the very core of our entire education." Along with these primers, children were given a supplement entitled Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid (Don't Trust A Fox in A Green Meadow Or the Word of A Jew).
Updated by:
Serene Tan 3A
No comments:
Post a Comment