r l World ANALYSIS Passover Slight Arthur Szyk's Haggadah challenged Adolf Hitler. Dr. Rafael Medoff Special to the Jewish News cartoonist for the New York Post while also contributing anti-Nazi illustrations and cartoons to Collier's, Time, Esquire and other leading magazines. His work earned him widespread praise, including from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who remarked, "This is a personal war of Szyk against Hitler, and I do not think that Mr. Szyk will lose this war!" Szyk closely followed the news reports in 1941-1942 about German massacres of Jews. He was appalled at the Allied leaders' refusal to acknowledge that the Jews were being singled out for persecution. "They treat us as a pornographical subject — you cannot discuss it in polite society:' he protested. Washington, D.C. 0 ne of the most popular Haggadot in the world almost didn't make it into print —because nervous publishers were afraid that some of its illustrations might offend Adolf Hitler. The story of Arthur Szyk's controversial Haggadah begins in the early 1930s when Szyk [pronounced "Shick"], the renowned Polish Jewish artist, began creating a lav- ishly illustrated edition of the traditional Passover Haggadah. But Szyk's was no ordinary Haggadah. Deeply pained by the Nazi persecution of German Jews, Szyk hoped to call attention to their suffering by link- ing it to the plight of the Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt. The illustrations in his Haggadah featured numerous overt refer- ences to the Nazis. The armbands worn by Szyk's Egyptian taskmasters bore swasti- kas, as did the snakes. Two of the snakes had the faces of Nazi chieftains Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering. The "wicked son" was dressed in distinctly German clothing and sported a Hitler- style mustache. When Szyk began looking for a publisher, he immediately ran into problems. Publishing houses in Czechoslovakia and (according to some accounts) Poland rejected Szyk's Haggadah for fear that the anti-Nazi imag- ery would offend Adolf Hitler. It was a tense time in Europe. Hitler had recently annexed the Saar region, remilitarized the Rhineland and launched a massive military buildup, in blatant violation of the peace treaty Germany had signed at the end of World War I. The Poles, Czechs and other nations bordering Germany watched nervously, wondering if they might become the next meal on Hitler's menu. Telling Mustache In 1937, Szyk moved to London, where his Haggadah was accepted for publication by the newly formed Beaconsfield Press. But the publisher insisted on one condition: All overt anti-Nazi images had to be removed. Art As A Weapon Arthur Szyk, circa 1950 The faces of Goebbels and Goering on provocation of Berlin. the snakes were removed, as were the "The English public was so desperate swastikas on the snakes' bodies. The swas- for peace that they averted their eyes to tikas on the armbands of the Egyptian the reality that war was coming:' says the taskmasters were replaced with a small eminent British author Michael Moorcock, black circle. The small whose recent novel, The black mustache on the Vengeance of Rome, deals in wicked son was the only part with the international surviving symbol. community's failure to stop Public opinion in Hitler in the 1930s. "People England during the really believed — or simply 1930s strongly sup- wanted to believe — that ported the government's appeasing Hitler would work. policy of appeasing, They were horribly mis- rather than confront- taken:' ing, Hitler. Oxford As it happened, Szyk's University students anti-Nazi passion became voted, by 64 percent to an asset after England was 36 percent, that they forced, by the German inva- Hitler as the W icked Son, would "in no circum- sion of Poland, to go to war in the Szyk Ha ggadah stances fight for King against Hitler. Impressed and Country." More than by the powerful illustra- 130,000 Englishmen tions Szyk contributed to signed a petition by the Peace Pledge the war propaganda campaign, the British Union renouncing war. Even something government asked him to go to America as seemingly small as an anti-Nazi cari- to rally public opinion to support U.S. cature in a Jewish religious book could be aid to England. Settling in New Canaan, seen by jittery Britons as an unnecessary Conn., in 1940, Szyk became the editorial Szyk decided to use his art as a weapon to raise public awareness of his people's plight, as he had attempted to do with his anti-Nazi Haggadah. He became a leading member of the Bergson Group, a Jewish political action committee that raised public awareness of the mass mur- der and lobbied the U.S. government to rescue Jewish refugees. Szyk's illustrations appeared in the Bergson Group's full-page newspaper advertisements, brochures and publications. Bergson activist Ben Hecht, the famous playwright, called Szyk "our one-man art department." As Passover approaches this year, many of us will take our copy of the Szyk Haggadah down from the bookshelf and gaze admiringly at its extraordinary artwork. It is mostly a showpiece, since owners enjoy viewing and discussing it, but hesitate to bring it to a seder table laden with things that spill and stain. Nevertheless, we remember Arthur Szyk's greatness, not only for his remark- able artistic talent, but even more so for his determination to use that talent on behalf of the persecuted Jews of Europe. "I am but a Jew praying in art," Szyk would sometimes say. At a time when most of the world ignored the plight of Europe's Jews, Syzk answered their cries with his unique "prayers" — his art and activism on behalf of an abandoned people. ❑ Dr. Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, www.WymanInstitute.org. April 17. 2008 A37