Finished, light brown wooden crook handle with marled maple like grain carved in the shape of a man's head attached to an oak shaft. The face has finely etched detailing: large, circular eyes with a sad, blank expression, beneath thick eyebrows with etched hairs and a furrowed forehead. Short, tightly spiraled, etched sidelocks extend from beneath a tilted kippah. He has lined cheeks, an oversized ridged nose with a plump tip, a long, thin, grooved mustache, and a protruding lower lip. The long, thick beard has etched lines of semi-circles over the curved top and a smooth, flat underside with a rounded tip that extends outward to create a finger grip. The neck curves at the back and angles down into a cylindrical stem. The stem is attached to a long, finished cylindrical oak shaft with a cone shaped, rusty, iron ferrule with an indented cap at the bottom.
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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 cane was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016 by the Katz Family.
overall: Height: 36.625 inches (93.028 cm) | Width: 1.375 inches (3.493 cm) | Depth: 3.625 inches (9.208 cm)
Walking stick with a marled wooden crook handle carved in the form of a Jewish man's head attached to an oak shaft. 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 more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic visual materials.
Walking stick with a handle carved as a sorrowful Jewish man's head