HATEMAIL: Anti-Semitism on Picture Postcards

The picture postcard was in its heyday in the late 19th century, when travel became a regular part of people's lives, and its popularity coincided with outbreaks of anti-semitism throughout Europe, with a notorious example being the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish officer was wrongly accused of an act of treason perpetrated by a French aristocrat. This collection makes profoundly uncomfortable reading at the same time as it sheds important light on the nature of anti-semitism and how it was spread. Around 300 postcards are reproduced here, divided by country as one nation's anti-semitism is markedly different from another's. Ordinary people sent anti-semitic postcards to their friends and relatives without any apparent awareness that the content was distasteful or inflammatory. Even in America the standard tropes are there, including exaggerated features, exclusion from the military, carrying an umbrella and an emphasis on money. In 19th century France the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war was popularly ascribed to Jewish influence. In Germany the Ostjude - Jew from the east - played a key role in forming the country's narrative of Jews as outsiders. Incidents such as the Konitz murder of 1900, where a Jew was wrongly blamed for a gruesome killing, fed into the mythology. The UK's king of seaside postcards, Donald McGill, freely used anti-semitic tropes until the rise of Hitler, when public opinion was no longer so receptive. Other countries discussed are Austria, Ukraine, and notably Poland which lost three million Jews in the Holocaust. A section on Nazi-era postcards includes images from "The Eternal Jew" exhibition of 1937 in Munich, showing Jews as physically deformed and suggesting that they were behind the Communist revolution in countries such as Russia. 238pp, softback, hundreds of colour illustrations. Save £20.