Wooden cane with a grip shaped as a Jewish man’s elongated nose

The Katz Ehrenthal Collection is a collection of more than 900 objects depicting Jews and antisemitic and anti-Jewish propaganda from the medieval to the modern era, in Europe, Russia, and the United States. The collection was amassed by Peter Ehrenthal, a Romanian Holocaust survivor, to document the pervasive history of anti-Jewish hatred in Western art, politics and popular culture. It includes crude folk art as well as pieces created by Europe's finest craftsmen, prints and periodical illustrations, posters, paintings, decorative art, and toys and everyday household items decorated with depictions of stereotypical Jewish figures. 

The walking stick was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016 by the Katz Family. 

Wooden cane with a grip shaped as a Jewish man’s elongated nose 

overall: Height: 35.125 inches (89.218 cm) | Width: 1.125 inches (2.858 cm) | Depth: 3.375 inches (8.573 cm) 

Oak walking stick with a changeable carved handle shaped as the head of a Jewish man with kippah and pointy beard. European artisans commonly adorned everyday items such as ceramics, toys, and even walking sticks, with caricatures of Jewish faces. These walking sticks are examples of racial antisemitism becoming part of everyday life. This cane is one of the more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic artifacts and visual materials. 

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Finished, dark stained, wooden, palm grip with striated wood grain attached to an oak shaft. The grip or handle is carved as a caricatured Jewish man’s head with an angled, rounded kippah with a carved button as the top butt. The forehead bulges slightly over deepset eyes, and it has long, grooved, curled sidelocks. The L-shaped grip is formed by the exaggeratedly long, cylindrical rounded nose which has recessed, elongated nostrils on the underside. The area between the nose and beard forms a C-shaped curve with the open mouth as the center. It has thick, raised lips and a short, pointed, grooved beard extends out at the front. The short, cylindrical neck shaft is attached to a long, turned, cylindrical oak shaft. A conical, silver colored metal ferrule with a pointed, beveled tip is nailed on with a brass nail near the end of the shaft.