Language:
German
Year of publication:
2005
Titel der Quelle:
Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung
Angaben zur Quelle:
14 (2005) 323-344
Keywords:
Richter, Hans Peter,
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Antisemitism in literature
;
Children's stories History and criticism
Abstract:
"Damals war es Friedrich" (1961) is one of the most popular German children's books and is often assigned in schools as supplementary reading in the teaching of the Holocaust. It is the story of Friedrich, a Jewish boy in 1930s Germany, as told by his German friend. Criticizes the stereotypical representation of the Jews (they try too hard to ingratiate themselves, but they provoke their poorer neighbors with their show of wealth); its determinism (in all eras some group is persecuted; this time it was the Jews, whose fate is foreordained in their Torah); and its exculpation of ordinary Germans by the Jews themselves (when the narrator's father joins the Nazi Party, the Jewish neighbor shows understanding - if he weren't a Jew he might have joined the Party himself; when the narrator discovers a rabbi hidden by Friedrich's family, the rabbi urges him to report him lest he himself and his family suffer - so the boy does not even face a moral dilemma). Comments that the book reflects its time, the 1960s; there is no justification for its continued use in schools today.
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