The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945

by Richard J. Evans

The Eternal Jew, directed by Fritz Hippler under Goebbels’s personal supervision, was a feature-length documentary that also purported to show how Jews really were. Pictures of Jews on the streets of Polish towns were intercut with film sequences of ‘rats, which,’ the synopsis said, ‘are the parasites and bacillus-carriers among animals, just as the Jews occupy the same position among mankind’. Film of kosher butchering, taken in Poland shortly after the invasion of 1939, was edited to suggest the brutality of the Jews, while mock-up sets of Jewish homes showed dirt, neglect and infestation with vermin. Just like rats, Jews had migrated across the world, and everywhere, the film claimed, citing a whole series of invented statistics, the Jews committed crimes, spread revolution and subversion, and undermined cultural values and standards.