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Oval, cast bronze dish with a bas relief of a room interior with a family gathered around a table. From the left, a bearded man in right profile wearing a tricorn hat, knee-length coat, and breeches feeds a boy with unruly hair. The child, in left profile, sits on a chamber pot on the table, his pants pulled down. Three people near the table watch the boy: in front stands a child in a top hat and long coat, back to the viewer; to his right is a seated woman in bonnet and glasses; to her right is a seated woman in a cap. A man in a top hat and a knee-length coat stands watching from the right. The visible faces have stereotypical Jewish features: thick eyebrows, large noses, hooded eyes, and fleshy lips. In the room around the group are a large umbrella, balance scales, and clothing hanging on the wall. The plaque has a raised rim with an embossed garland of leaves and German text at the bottom.
Decorative bronze plaque with an image of a Jewish family watching a young boy sitting on a chamber pot situated on the kitchen table. The characters in the image all have several stereotypical physical features commonly attributed to Jews: thick eyebrows, large noses, hooded eyes, fleshy lips and bowed legs. In the scene, a young Jewish boy has eaten a ducat (a coin) and his family is feverishly trying to retrieve it by spoon-feeding him a substance to help him excrete the coin. The family appears to be more concerned about retrieving the coin than for the boy’s comfort. The image is from the satirical, antisemitic booklet, “Die Schabbes Lamp vunn pollische Messing: mit ächt koschere Schimen” [The Schabbat lamp of polished brass: with authentic kosher lampshades] published in 1835. However, the caption on the plaque names the boy “Moishele,” while in the original book he is called “Lämmle.” The book was written under the Jewish sounding pen name of Itzig Feitel Stern, which was likely the nom de plume of multiple people over a period of several years. It is thought that Heinrich Holzschuher and Johann Friedrich Sigmund von Holzschuher both used this same pen name, possibly along with other writers. The books are printed in a right to left format, mimicking the orientation of Hebrew writing. They contain antisemitic pictures, poems, and stories written in a pseudo-German language, which the author used to ridicule and mock Jewish speech. Several antisemitic works of this type were written under this pen name. The plaque is one of the more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic artifacts and visual materials.
Bronze dish of a Jewish family waiting for a boy to pass swallowed money
The plaque was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016 by the Katz Family.
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.
overall: Height: 4.375 inches (11.113 cm) | Width: 6.875 inches (17.463 cm) | Depth: 0.500 inches (1.27 cm)
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