Connections

In the propaganda display there was an illustration from the book The Poisonous Mushroom of a Jewish man luring innocent children with candy. The intention of this picture was clearly to strike fear in German households especially parents who were now concerned on how to keep their children safe from bad intentioned strangers such as Jews. In Maus on page 149 while Vladek is out on the street he encounters children who scream in fear “A Jew, a Jew!” and run to their mothers for safety. According to Vladek, mothers would tell their children that Jews will “catch you to a bag and eat you!”  When the children first shout that Vladek is a Jew, Vladek looks baffled at how even the children were converted to seeing Jews as monsters which shows how seemingly impossible it was to escape the Nazis. These passages reveal that propaganda was very effective and influenced an array of ages and it’s possible that the children’s fear of Vladek may have been due to them reading The Poisonous Mushroom or other propaganda that was targeted at children. It’s almost ridiculous to think that people were so gullible when told that Jews were pedophiles they would be utterly convinced it was true without any actual evidence verifying the claims.  This just proves how people reacted to supposed “dangers” and how much people were controlled by fear.