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Hatemail: Anti-Semitism on Picture Postcards
Today e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter are sometimes used to spread hateful messages and slurs masking as humor. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries postcards served this purpose. The images collected in this volume make it painfully clear that anti-Semitic propaganda did not simply begin with the Nazis. Nor was it the sole province of politicians, journalists, and rabble-rousers. One of the most virulent forms of anti-Semitism during this time was spread by quite ordinary people through postcards. Of the millions of postcards exchanged during their heyday of 1890 through 1920, a considerable percentage carried the anti-Semitic images that publishers churned out to meet public demand, reflecting deep-seated attitudes of society.
Over 250 examples of such postcards, largely from the pre-Holocaust era, are reproduced here for the first time—selected, translated, and historically contextualized by one of the world’s foremost postcard collectors. Although representing but a small sample of the many thousands that were in print, these examples nonetheless offer a disturbing glimpse—one shocking to the modern sensibility—into the many permutations of anti-Semitism eagerly circulated by millions of people. In so doing, they help us to better understand a phenomenon still pervasive today.
Over 250 examples of such postcards, largely from the pre-Holocaust era, are reproduced here for the first time—selected, translated, and historically contextualized by one of the world’s foremost postcard collectors. Although representing but a small sample of the many thousands that were in print, these examples nonetheless offer a disturbing glimpse—one shocking to the modern sensibility—into the many permutations of anti-Semitism eagerly circulated by millions of people. In so doing, they help us to better understand a phenomenon still pervasive today.
248 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 16, 2014
This book, while truly important to an understanding of antisemitism, particularly prewar antisemitism, is truly depressing, and all the more so considering that I finished it the day before Purim, the Jewish holiday commemorating national rescue from antisemitism. (Not one of my better ideas, perhaps, but there you go.)
Hatemail: Anti-Semitism on Picture Postcards, a coffee-table study by Salo Aizenberg, described on the back cover as the world's leading collector of Judaica postcards, contains hundreds of examples of picture postcards—most from the "Golden Age", between around 1890 and around 1925—that depict antisemitic imagery and messages. Aizenberg's message is that in an era before the telephone or other communication and before world travel became easy and ubiquitous, postcards were the primary means of communication, with tens of billions sent on a yearly basis during their Golden Age; as such, antisemitic messages and images on such postcards represent the underlying, everyday measure of prejudice endemic in a population, and constitute the equivalent of a bigoted signature on a tweet, e-mail, or text message. Aizenberg suggests that while the majority of a given population was not actively antisemitic, it ran under the surface, and was somewhat normative, based on the cavalier nature with which many senders of postcards treated the images and so forth. Again, as such, these postcards—mostly from Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States—are enlightening as to the relationship between the Jewish minority and the rest of the population in the days before the Shoah made antisemitism mostly unacceptable in polite society; Hatemail is an invaluable contribution to an understanding of Jewish history.
However, where it falls down is in Aizenberg's occasional treatment of the materials. It's troubling, for example, that—while Aizenberg is not a historian per se—he adopts almost wholesale Daniel Goldhagen's thesis from Hitler's Willing Executioners that antisemitism was a vital part of the German psyche before World War II, and made the Shoah possible. While the German postcards that Aizenberg shows were indeed truly virulent, in a manner less commonly seen in, say, American or British postcards—more on that below—most historians have debunked the entirety of Goldhagen's thesis, and recognized that prewar German-Jewish relations were far more complex. Perhaps, considering that Goldhagen's thesis has been more or less accepted by the non-historian public, Aizenberg can't be wholly blamed for this, but it remains troubling nonetheless.
Likewise, on the other hand, Aizenberg misses certain antisemitic stereotypes and images in some of the postcards that I noticed immediately—and I'm neither trained in recognizing antisemitism in art nor a postcard expert. For example, there's a British postcard in Hatemail in which a stereotypical Jew is knocked down by a fire engine rushing to a fire; I noticed the reference to insurance fraud in the postcard, but Aizenberg apparently did not. Similarly, an American postcard refers to the Elks fraternal organization, but Aizenberg misses this as well, deeming the image on the card a mere reference to Jews' allegedly having horns; one would think a trained observer could recognize this more nuanced approach.
That being said, Aizenberg does a more than adequate job of training the non-expert to recognize certain elements of design. Once Aizenberg mentions, for example, that publishers often recycled images, it's not hard to tell that the same Jewish figure appears in separate publishers' postcards for mailing from the Karlsbad and Marienbad spas in what is now the Czech Republic. I just wish Aizenberg had been a little more thorough in some specific circumstances.
Hatemail: Anti-Semitism on Picture Postcards, a coffee-table study by Salo Aizenberg, described on the back cover as the world's leading collector of Judaica postcards, contains hundreds of examples of picture postcards—most from the "Golden Age", between around 1890 and around 1925—that depict antisemitic imagery and messages. Aizenberg's message is that in an era before the telephone or other communication and before world travel became easy and ubiquitous, postcards were the primary means of communication, with tens of billions sent on a yearly basis during their Golden Age; as such, antisemitic messages and images on such postcards represent the underlying, everyday measure of prejudice endemic in a population, and constitute the equivalent of a bigoted signature on a tweet, e-mail, or text message. Aizenberg suggests that while the majority of a given population was not actively antisemitic, it ran under the surface, and was somewhat normative, based on the cavalier nature with which many senders of postcards treated the images and so forth. Again, as such, these postcards—mostly from Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States—are enlightening as to the relationship between the Jewish minority and the rest of the population in the days before the Shoah made antisemitism mostly unacceptable in polite society; Hatemail is an invaluable contribution to an understanding of Jewish history.
However, where it falls down is in Aizenberg's occasional treatment of the materials. It's troubling, for example, that—while Aizenberg is not a historian per se—he adopts almost wholesale Daniel Goldhagen's thesis from Hitler's Willing Executioners that antisemitism was a vital part of the German psyche before World War II, and made the Shoah possible. While the German postcards that Aizenberg shows were indeed truly virulent, in a manner less commonly seen in, say, American or British postcards—more on that below—most historians have debunked the entirety of Goldhagen's thesis, and recognized that prewar German-Jewish relations were far more complex. Perhaps, considering that Goldhagen's thesis has been more or less accepted by the non-historian public, Aizenberg can't be wholly blamed for this, but it remains troubling nonetheless.
Likewise, on the other hand, Aizenberg misses certain antisemitic stereotypes and images in some of the postcards that I noticed immediately—and I'm neither trained in recognizing antisemitism in art nor a postcard expert. For example, there's a British postcard in Hatemail in which a stereotypical Jew is knocked down by a fire engine rushing to a fire; I noticed the reference to insurance fraud in the postcard, but Aizenberg apparently did not. Similarly, an American postcard refers to the Elks fraternal organization, but Aizenberg misses this as well, deeming the image on the card a mere reference to Jews' allegedly having horns; one would think a trained observer could recognize this more nuanced approach.
That being said, Aizenberg does a more than adequate job of training the non-expert to recognize certain elements of design. Once Aizenberg mentions, for example, that publishers often recycled images, it's not hard to tell that the same Jewish figure appears in separate publishers' postcards for mailing from the Karlsbad and Marienbad spas in what is now the Czech Republic. I just wish Aizenberg had been a little more thorough in some specific circumstances.
June 1, 2016
This is truly one of the funniest books I have ever read. The postcards are hysterical and so are the author's indignant comments about the sender's innocuous messages on the back. These cards aren't hateful, they are funny. I wonder if the author has as much vitriol towards the dumb blonde stereotype, which was created by Jewish Hollywood as a way to poke fun at Hitler and demean Nordic and Germanic folks. The world was a better place when we all laughed at each other. Besides, if you are of Jewish blood or have Jewish family members, you know that most of us/them have big noses and joke about them with each other and we all know someone who fits the greedy money-grubber profile. I have a Cohen cousin so cheap that he wouldn't offer his own mother a pillow when she came to visit AND his plans for a house he wanted to build were turned down for being too small to fit ordinance. I could tell you story after story about just him that would have you laughing for days. Ignore the text and enjoy the pictures. You're probably yucking it up at Legally Blonde, White Chicks and all of the other movies making fun of the only racial group you are allowed to poke fun at.
August 12, 2020
Interesting topic that I was not familiar with. Powerful images, very relevant even today.
June 21, 2015
Good collection of anti-Semitic postcards with detailed analysis. I did catch one serious partial misreading (p.129, concerning the meaning of free-wheel in bicycling, and the Scottish stereotype of thriftiness), but still a strong contribution. Not quite 4 stars, for me, more like 3.5...
April 3, 2014
Review is written and will posted after it posts at its place of origin.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews