The legal attacks on the Jews of Germany in the 1930s were accompanied by extensive propaganda, which took a wide variety of forms. In 1936, a book entitled Trust No Fox on a Green Heath and No Jew on His Word was published which used simple illustrations and verses to appeal to young children. It was written and illustrated by Elvira Bauer. These are examples of the text.
When God the father made the world,
He conceived the races:
Indians, Negroes and Chinese,
And Jews, too, the evil creatures.
And we, we were also there:
The Germans in this multitude. –
He gave them all a piece of earth,
To work with the sweat of their brow.
But the Jew would not do the same!
The devil rode him from the first.
He wished to cheat, not work,
In first place he learnt to lie
From his father, the Devil, quick and well
And wrote it in the Talmud.
…
The German and the Jew.
Inspect them well,
Both in the picture here.
A joke – you might almost think;
One has guessed it quite easily:
The German stands, the Jew cowers!
The German is a proud man,
Who can work and fight.
Because he is so beautiful and brave,
The Jew has always hated him!
This is the Jew, as all can see,
The greatest scoundrel in all the Reich!
He thinks himself the most beautiful
And yet is the ugliest there is!
Elvira Bauer was an 18-year-old art student and kindergarten teacher. Her example shows that the persecution of the Jews in Germany was made possible not only by the actions of the state but also those of ‘ordinary’ people.
Image: drawings from Elvira Bauer, Trau keinen Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinen Jud bei seinen Eid! (Stürmer-Verlag, 1936)
Verses: ibid.
