The Wiener Holocaust Library holds two copies of what has been called “history’s most infamous board game.”
Using crude antisemitic stereotypes and imagery, the game’s themes reflect racial hatred, forced deportations, and confiscation of Jewish property. The board shows a walled town, through which players move to round up Jews and deposit them outside the city walls, where a slogan reads “Auf nach Palästina!” (English: “Off to Palestine!”) The winner is the first to remove six people.
Although the game was not endorsed by the Nazis (it was seen to trivialise Nazi policies) and contains no Nazi insignia, the casual, cheery tone used in the text accompanying the game reveals how socially acceptable bigotry and antisemitism was at the time.
On 15 January 2017, Juden Raus was featured on a special Holocaust Memorial edition of BBC One's Antiques Roadshow. Watch back on the iPlayer.
As one of our best known items, we receive many external loan requests other institutions wishing to display our copies of Juden Raus! In a related blog our Deputy Director Dr Christine Schmidt and Head of Collections Greg Toth discussed the ethics and practicalities of creating a replica of the board game to allow us to accomodate more of these requests.
