A rare anti-Semitic booklet published anonymously, calling to require Jews to mark themselves with a yellow badge in France. The writer, an anti-Semitic propagandist during the occupation of France, harshly attacks Jews in a crude language, trying to show the reader the disaster Jews brought upon the French people in all areas of life, attempting to bring them to the conclusion that it is time to impose upon French Jews an external mark of disgrace and require them to wear a yellow badge. On the cover is a drawing of a ‘French yellow badge’ with the word “Juif” – Jew, and on the back a drawing of an ancient medieval yellow badge. France, late 1930s, shortly before Jews were in fact required to wear a yellow badge in Nazi-occupied France.
The booklet is written crudely against Jews, describing the Jewish people as an inferior race that brings disaster upon the world in general and France in particular: “Universal parasitism characterizing the functioning of the Jewish people among other nations lies at the heart of Judaism and its worldview… Jews… poisoned employer-employee relations… we must put an end to the abominable trade of Jews!… they created the black market… and destroyed hope for a better life…their status should be that of foreigners…”. In France, many did not accept the idea of imposing badges of disgrace on Jews, especially not in the 20th century, the writer tries to convince how the yellow badge “appropriately” fits the behavior of the Jewish people: “a cursed race, living like wood lice among other peoples, nesting among every nation like a spider in the middle of its web to await its prey…”, and adds that “Jews must be required to wear the yellow badge, the unique sign of their true identity…”.
The booklet calls to expel Jews from French territory, and warns of the ‘Jewish demographic danger’ – that “if Jewish colonization grows, in another 100 years out of 20 million French there will be 15 million Jews”, noting the large percentage of Jews in all areas of life in France compared to the French in medicine, banking, press, courts, universities, “Judaism holds a sixth of the total capital wealth of our country”, and more. Also accusing Jews of being the major drug and gambling dealers in the country, stating over 50% of those engaged in this are Jews. Summarizing the woeful situation French society arrived at due to the rising power of Jews with the anti-Semitic sentence: “All we have left are our eyes to cry… our Handkerchief is woven by the French, but it is sold to us by the Jews”.
On the last page, the writer blames the Jews for being the cause of the wars France got into, and concludes that France is: “a ruined, bruised, and miserable country, under the slavery of Israel.”
On the back of the booklet, in another attempt to convince of the need to distinguish Jews by marking them with a yellow badge, is a drawing of a medieval yellow badge, describing the places Jews were forced to wear this badge in the 15th-16th centuries, attempting to show that in the ancient past too the ‘Jewish problem’ was “handled” in a similar way.
[15] p. 21 cm. Stains on the bottom part of the front cover. Good condition.
