Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and Its History, by Isaiah Shachar. 1974. Warburg Institute Surveys V, University of London

The Pig as a Long-Term Stand-In, For Jews, in German Antisemitism. Now It’s the Poles’ Turn (in MAUS). Why?

This scholarly work features many photographs of Judensau images that are printed, and others that are still present on outside church walls in Germany. It also traces the history of the Judensau in German antisemitism.

ALL ANIMALS ARE NOT EQUALLY DEROGATORY! THE PIG STANDS OUT

Spiegelman excuses his choice of Poles as pigs, in MAUS, through the bogus argument that, since all the characters are animals, it really makes no difference which animal is chosen. So Spiegelman would have us imagine that it matters not that Poles are pigs, because, after all, the Germans are cats and Jews are mice. It most certainly does! With reference to the Judensau, Shachar writes, “There were other minor medieval symbols representing the Jews, such as the owl and the scorpion, but they were less common and comparatively short-lived.” (p. 1). Now, if animal images were equally derogatory, then Jews, in medieval Germany, should just as often been characterized as cats and mice as they were characterized as pigs. But they were not, in German antisemitism, and so Spiegelman’s lame excuse for his anti-Polish bigotry collapses.

In fact, so powerful is the pig as a derogatory symbol that it actually supplanted other derogatory characterizations, moreover beyond just the use of other animals, in use to cast aspersions on Jews. Shachar comments, “It is noticeable that the explicit accusations that were voiced during the Middle Ages against Jews were hardly ever prominently depicted. There are hardly any sculptures showing the Jew as a usurer, as a poisoner of wells, as a desecrator of the Host, or as a kidnapper and murderer of Christian children. The only surviving carved illusion to the last of these was, significantly, inserted into a Judensau scene.” (p. 1).

The power of the image of the pig, and no other animal, as a symbol of abomination is elaborated by Shachar, who remarks, “…the attitude expressed in the Judensau towards the Jews is not just scurrilous. There was a further element or sub-motif in all its representations: the Jews belong to the sow, the sow to the Jews. These people, in other words, belong to another and abominable category of beings; they are the sow’s offspring and turn to their mother for proper nourishment.” (p. 3).

THE PIG AS A FORCEFUL SYMBOL OF DEGRADATION AND SHAME

Shachar writes, “The Schandbild, a defamatory picture, became in the fifteenth century a judicial instrument by which reluctant debtors or fugitive criminals were punished. The offenders were depicted in these pictures in a degrading manner…The Judensau had been a potential Schandbild long before this judicial usage, and in the fifteenth century it readily merged with it.” (pp. 40-41).

THE DURABILITY OF THE PIG AS A DEROGATORY IMAGE

The centrality of the pig, as a degrading symbol of Jews in German antisemitism, was no passing fad. It persisted for many centuries, moreover even as some of the derogatory details changed. Shachar comments, “The circumstances in which the scenes were exhibited vary from place to place, and local motives were not uniform. The Judensau was adapted to a variety of purposes—which underlines its prominence both as the anti-Jewish joke of the time, and as an association with ‘the Jews'”. (p. 41. Emphasis in original.)

SO WHY ARE POLES NOW THE PIGS IN MAUS?

Permit some psychoanalysis. Could it be that the Jews, having undergone centuries of humiliation by being associated with pigs, are now trying to displace the pig image–unto Poles? Is this facilitated by the fact that Poles are a “safe” target–in that they lack the political power to bite back effectively?