DESCRIPTION

The Eternal Jew (1940) is an antisemitic[1] German Nazi propaganda film[2], posing as a documentary. Its title in German is Der ewige Jude, the German term for the character of the "Wandering Jew" in medieval folklore. At the insistence of Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the film was directed by Fritz Hippler. The screenplay is credited to Eberhard Taubert. The film consists of feature and documentary footage combined with materials filmed shortly after the Nazi occupation of Poland. At this time Poland's Jewish population was about three million, roughly ten percent of the total population. Actor Harry Giese (1903–1991) narrated.

A British film of the same name had been produced by Gaumont-Twickenham studios in 1934. Unlike the later Nazi film, the British production portrayed the Jews in a favorable light as the victims of unjustified persecution throughout history, in the Spanish Inquisition, for example. The Goebbels film appears to have been intended as a violently anti-Semitic version of this previous British film.[3]