Repository name: Wiener Library
Repository reference: WL 1556
Item Reference: OBJ 046

Unfortunately the history of this particular game is lost. In a way this is not surprising (!) since the Wiener Library and Archive began life as The Jewish Central Information Office in Amsterdam, 1934. Its remit then was to gather materials and reports on growing anti-Semitism in Germany. Later during the war years, by which time it had relocated to London, its primary function was to provide information and reports to departments within the British Government to assist in the war effort. It was only after the war that the library began to systematically catalogue its materials and begin to worry about provenance.

The board game was produced by a German company which sought to capitalise on the growing anti-semitic mood of the mid 1930s. By 1936 when the game came out, the notorious Nuremberg race laws had already been enacted and many Jews were already experiencing discrimination in work and education and recreation. The obscene anti-semitic caricatures of Jews would have been visible in towns and cities throughout Germany via Julius Streicher's infamous ‘newspaper' Der Stürmer.

It is thought that one of Alfred Wiener's contacts in Germany obtained the board game for the library but we can not be sure.

The game's title "Juden raus" means "Out With The Jews!". It requires the players to roll dice and move smiling, brightly-coloured figures about a village, picking up conical yellow figures - depicting Jews with grotesque faces - which fit on their heads.

The writing on the board declares that whoever carries six Jews out of their shops and properties and out of the village is the winner. It is a well-made, brightly coloured creation, and serves as a depressing reminder of man's ability to be fiendishly creative in his inhumanity to others.

A player's figurine collects Jews represented as hats on its head.

An example of a Jewish shop from which Jews are collected.