Der ewige Jude

People might argue that this movie is full of lies, and thus have no value because its untruthfulness. I find the film very interesting because it is a opportunity for us to learn how things not always is how they seem to be. We must have in mind that the common people of that time didn't have the same horizon as people have now a day. Therefore it was easier to convince them.

I see the film as a reminder to not always trust what we are told.

We watched this film in history class as an example of Nazi racial ideology. The fact that they were somehow able to stretch Hitler's braindead axiom -- summed up in his speech at the film's close, where he prophesizes the destruction of the European Jews -- to an hour-plus-long-film is amazing. There is not a single truth to be found here; even the film's explanation of the migration of Jews into Europe (something a first-year anthropology student can figure out) is distorted, while pseudo-scientific figures are used in an attempt to justify the obviously unjustifiable. Many parts would be hilarious, in a sort of camp, paranoid, "Reefer Madness"-type way, if not for the fact that the German people swallowed this garbage hook, line and sinker and stood by idly while their leaders carried out the genocide of millions of innocents. Many snippets are almost deliciously ironic in retrospect -- for example, the bit attacking Einstein's Jewish "pseudo-science" (a peculiar allegation, seeing how desperate the Nazis were to recruit his aid) and another slamming the Jewish actor Peter Lorre and his film "M" (Lorre was Hitler's favorite actor, and "M" his favorite film). From a cinematic perspective, the film is dull and hackneyed, even by 1940 "documentary" standards. It should be said that the movie is darkly fascinating (in the same sense as, say, a bad car wreck), but the only legitimate reason for its existence is to illustrate the evil yet idiotic nature of Nazism.

A film used to "educate" the German public on the "danger" allegedly posed by the Jews, this film does all it can to paint Jews as subhuman (or better, anti-human) monstrosities.

Randall Bytwerk points-out in his biography of Nazi leader Julius Streicher (an excellent book which is much more about anti-Jewish propaganda techniques than it is a biography) that it was impossible for the Nazis to actually make the mass of Germans actively hate their Jewish fellow citizens. Bytwerk argues that the propaganda machinery focused on the idea of making Jews seem so wretched, disgusting and hateful that they would appear to be beings simply not worth caring about. This film, it seems to me, takes that as its motivation.

There is one interesting moment that hurts the filmmakers' cause: the camera panning over the crowds in the ghetto, when a group of Jewish youngsters are shown plainly trying to look over one another's shoulders and heads, grinning at the camera. Such moments would remind the average person that these were plainly people like anyone you might know.

Overall, however, the Berlin Gestapo reported that audience reaction to this film was "highly favorable," particularly the scenes equating Jews with disease-spreading rodents.

This is a disgusting film in that it gives a totally false image of an entire race - the Jews. Yes, it is important film to watch as long as it is understood that it is to be watched solely to understand how humans can be so hateful, and it is true that history that is ignored is apt to be repeated. This is the only reason that it should be seen. Neo-Nazis distribute this film calling it "the best documentary ever made on Jews." This film is to Jews as D.W. Griffith's "Birth Of A Nation" is to African-Americans. An excellent essay written on this film by Stig Hornshøj-Møller is available in the "miscellaneous" section of this website, I suggest everyone read it.

Looking away from the content, and seen strictly as a movie whose purpose is propaganda and instilling hatred and dislike of jews, this movie did it's job very well.

If you see this movie as a document of the general atmosphere at that time (60 years ago, already dislike of jews in NS-Germany, lower educational level among the public in general, etc.) you can easily imagine how effective it was.

As an illustration of the atmosphere in prewar, nazi-Germany for the historically interested, this movie is a good document.