Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland - Paperback

by Ewa Stańczyk (Author)

Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery been fully realized or so blatantly apparent than on the eve of the Second World War. In Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland, scholar Ewa Stańczyk explores how illustrators conceived of Jewish people in satirical drawing and reflected on the burning political questions of the day. Incorporating hundreds of cartoons, satirical texts, and newspaper articles from the 1930s, Stańczyk investigates how a visual culture that was essentially hostile to Jews penetrated deep and wide into Polish print media. In her sensitive analysis of these sources, the first of this kind in English, the author examines how major satirical magazines intervened in the ongoing events and contributed to the racialized political climate of the time.

Author Biography

Ewa Stańczyk is assistant professor in East European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She is author of Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland and editor of Comic Books, Graphic Novels and the Holocaust.