Nazi kids’ game

A sick antisemitic board game called Jews Out! created by the Nazis in 1938 for children, has been put on display for Holocaust Memorial Day at Tel Aviv University, writes Jotam Confino.

It tasks each player with collecting hats from Jewish residential and commercial areas and bringing them to one of the roundup spots. Whoever brings the hats first wins.

One of the captions on the board reads: “Go to Palestine!” (Auf nach Palästina!). The game was manufactured by a company called Guenther and Co. and distributed by a food merchant named Rudolf Fabricius.

Wiener Library scientific committee academic director and chair Prof Emeritus José Brunner said: “Jews Out! is clearly the outcome of years of blatant incitement and antisemitism

The “solemn duty” of “each one of us” to remember the six million men, women and children killed during the Shoah was referenced by UK foreign secretary James Cleverly at a Foreign, Commonwealth & Development O ce (FCDO) Holocaust Memorial Day event.

“When we say the words ‘never which prevailed in German society in the 1930s – so much so that someone got the idea that driving out the Jews was a suitable theme for a children’s game. again’, we must mean it, heart and soul,” Cleverly added. “We owe it to all who were not saved to reflect, to learn, to grieve and, above all, to remember.”

“However, the game was considered an exception even at the time. Most children played games that taught them the story of the Nazi party, when it was established and how it had developed, while this game expressly teaches children to deport Jews,” he added.

Prof. Brunner said the game was not well received by the Nazi regime. The SS weekly Das Schwarze Korps published a critical article in December 1938 arguing that Jews Out! disrespected the German policy of cleansing Germany of Jews, which was a methodical, thoroughly considered plan and not a game of chance as the game depicted.

The event, co-hosted by the FCDO and the Israeli Embassy in the UK, was part of a long-standing collaboration between the two countries to mark HMD.

Prof. Dina Porat from the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University said: “In the 1930s, children in German schools and preschools, who received their education from the Nazi party, played many games that encouraged them to identify with the party’s institutions.

Cleverly spoke to attendees about a visit last year to Radegast station in Lodz, Poland, where 200,000 Jewish men, women and children were transported to Nazi death camps.

Survivor Manfred Goldberg BEM also shared testimony with guests, including representatives from the Jewish community, diplomatic com-

“The game on display at the exhibition should be seen in the overall context of study materials in Nazi schools and preschools, such as a special edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for children, or the scary children’s book Poisonous Mushroom.” munity, civil society, parliamentarians, and other communal leaders.

Israel ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely added: “We remember the six million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust, as well as the millions of other lives who perished at the hands of Nazism and reflect on the systematic murder of ordinary people and immense pain and suffering needlessly inflicted.”

UK special envoy for post-Holocaust issues and UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation co-chair Lord Pickles said: “Sadly, the number of direct witnesses to the Holocaust is dwindling and that is why we must ensure it is never forgotten.”