Emil Nolde - The Jews' War

One of the most frightening facets of human experience is the ability of aggressors to implicate their victims in the process of their own annihilation. It happens time and time again - with individual victims of personal and domestic violence as well as on a larger scale - with victims of war. It is an inexplicable phenomenon.

Here is an extract from a letter, written by the notoriously antisemitic German expressionist artist Emil Nolde to his wife in May of 1943:

"Never has a war been instigated and fought with more sophisticated and diabolical cunning than has the present one. This ghastly, all-encompassing war was whipped up and bankrolled by a handful of smirking Jews, safely hidden from view behind the great governments and banks of this world, for what they want for themselves and for their race is to destroy and conquer not just us, as their foes, but even their friends and accomplices. The dull, harmless masses have for the most part allowed themselves to become ensnared and are now fighting each other, friend and foe alike, all for the 'ideals' of Jewish world domination. If this insight ever becomes common knowledge, it will end the war." (1)

By February 1943 almost half a million Jews were deported to Auschwitz from Germany.

In a sad twist of poetic justice over 1000 of Nolde's paintings were removed from German museum collections, hundreds were destroyed and over 50 were exhibited in the Degenerate Art exhibition alongside other "degenerate" modern art that Hitler despised.

Christ and the Sinner, 1926, oil on canvas, 86 × 106 cm, State museums of Berlin

References:

1. "The difficult case of Painter Emil Nolde" Lecture by Aya Soika, September 3, 2020