Ewige Jude” was engineered by Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. It was created to legitimize the exclusion, and the ultimately the destruction,of an entire people. It depicts the Jews of Poland as corrupt, filthy, lazy,ugly, and perverse: they are an alien people which have taken over the worldthrough their control of banking and commerce, yet which still live likeanimals. The narrator tries to depict the Jew’s behavior as rat like, whileshowing footage of rats squirming from sewers and leaping at the camera. Using the montage editing technique so as the juxtaposition of the shotswould imply to the viewer to connect the rats with the Jewish people. A verysimple and effective technique that is still used today. The film’s mostshocking scene is the slaughter of a cow, shown in bloody detail, by agrinning Rabbi- and it is followed by, of all things, three innocent(presumably German) lambs nuzzling each other. Which is yet anotherexample of the editing techniques that Pudoukin discussed.Hitler also provides the emotional climax of the film, with footage ofhis speech to the Reichstag from 1939. When preceded by sixty minutesdescribing the Jewish problem, and followed by thunderous applause, Hitler’sprophetic warning takes on even greater significance: “If the internationalfinance-Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging thenations into a world war yet again, then the outcome will not be the victory ofJewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”(AdolphHitler). The importance of this groundbreaking propaganda is oftenunderestimated. Someone might characterize the film as a X-ray of thedecision making process that led to the Holocaust. It can also be argued thatthe film is seen as the official promulgation of Hitler’s decision, and that it -together with the feature film Jud Sub- deliberately was used to prepare bothperpetrators and bystanders for the...
