The Jud Suss notes

Jud Suss (1940)

Watch for these themes:

• Jew as an alien
• everything is fine in Germany until the Jews arrive, then dissent and conflict and exploitation
• manipulation of wealth
• manipulation of lecherous drunken prince
• the Jew as rapist of Aryan maidens
  

Directed by Veit Harlan

set in 18th century Wurttembuerg

Jud Suss Oppenheimer weasels his way in and starts controlling the roads and loans

The Jew is seen as a manipulator, banker, leech

Dresses like a German nobleman

insidious

Kristina Soederbaum is the victim of Jud Suss

she is raped (this is called a "blutschande" or "blood crime" whereby pure Aryan blood is sullied by mixing with Jewish blood)

rather than suffer the shame of having a part-Jewish child, Kristina drowns herself (interesting note: this actress played so many similar roles, and kept drowning herself in each picture that she became known as the Reichswasserleiche, or "Reich Water Corpse)

Goebbels declared that the film was not to be described as anti-semitic

film shown throughout occupied Europe

The Jud Suss is put on trial after the Prince dies.

An eye for an eye is not the German way, the dead girl's father says.

Proclaims his innocence mocking Germans who pitied Jews.

His last pleas: "Ich bin nur ein armer Jude..." ("I am just a poor little Jew")

No pity shown.

As Goebbels said in late 1941, "to be sure their fate is a hard one, but more than deserved"

Jud Suss is hanged in a cage as the snow falls and the Jews are expelled from Wurttemberg

Themes:

• assimilated Jews are more dangerous than Polish Jews depicted in The Eternal Jew
• they are all the same: the modernized Jud Suss allied with the cunning magician rabbi
• blutschande is the highest crime
  

Expulsion of Jews justified in the movie

but other than Suss, who was guilty, no Jew is being harmed

Germans not ready for the full truth

By the time the film was widely released, measures had been taken to exterminate large numbers of Jews.

The film justified expulsion of German Jews, perhaps prepared viewers for larger things to come

Still a huge leap from executing Suss to murdering millions

But a viewer who, like many Germans, wanted to believe that the Jews were being sent to the "East" to "work" might leave the theater feeling better about ugly rumors