I’m watching a documentary on the Nazi destruction of the Jews when I learn about a board game called Juden Raus!. I am stunned that after sixty-four years of studying the Shoah, I had never heard of it. Yet I immediately recognized those two words. I remembered seeing Juden Raus painted across Jewish shop windows in Berlin in photographs from the 1930s.

Naturally, I looked up the game on Wikipedia, and this is some of what I learned:

Juden Raus! — literally, “Jews Out!” — was a cross-and-circle-style board game, somewhat like Monopoly, published in Germany by Günther & Co. in 1936. It was advertised as “entertaining, instructive, and solidly constructed.” It was marketed not only to adults, but also as a children’s gift.

Imagine German parents wrapping that game and placing it beneath a Christmas tree. I can.

The game included dice, a game board, and figurines depicting Jews wearing exaggerated pointed hats — caricatures rooted in medieval antisemitic imagery. Players rolled dice and moved their “Jews” across the board toward collection points outside the city walls for deportation to Mandatory Palestine. Printed on the board were the words:

“If you manage to send off six Jews, you’ve won a clear victory!”

“If you manage to send off six Jews, you’ve won a clear victory!”

What makes the game especially chilling is that........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)