Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

When Fairy Tales Kill
Steven K. Baum*
The author examines the link between social fantasies of Jews and
antisemitic attacks over the past millennia. He concludes that hundreds of
thousands of Jews have been killed largely based on social fantasy,
superstition, and legend.
When we first heard of the political myths, we found them so absurd and
incongruous, so fantastic and ludicrous, that we could hardly be prevailed
upon to take them seriously. By the end of the war, however, it had
become clear to all of us that this was a great mistake. . . The mythical
monsters were not entirely destroyed. They were used for the creation of
a new universe and they still survive in this universe.
— Ernst Cassirer, philosopher
Historian Ian Kershaw once said that the road to Auschwitz was paved
with indifference. That indifference may have reflected the community’s
negative feelings toward Jews. Such negative feelings may initially be
based on fantasy, but soon become all too real to those given to such fantasy
(Baum 2008). The transition from antisemitic fantasy to antisemitic act
may be an easy leap. Romanian researcher Andrei Oi¸steanu (2009, 4) likens
it to a ratio: “The greater the gap between the real Jew and the imaginary
Jew, the greater was popular Judeophobia.”
Freudians such as Bruno Bettelheim believed that folk tales prepared
children for maturation, but rarely mentioned the politics inherent in ethnic
tall tales. Among religious/ethnic groups, Jews were overly represented in
negative terms. The forms of legend varied, but made their way into Mother
Goose poems. Up until the 1930s, children could read Jack and the Beanstalk
with the following passage (Burnstein 1959).
* Steven K. Baum is a clinical psychologist who lives in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. He is co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.
Note: I would like to thank Steven L. Jacobs, Paul Bartop, Günther Jikeli, and
Frederick Schweitzer for their critiques. Additionally, I wish to note that I use
myth and legend interchangeably at times due to the fantasy aspect of both terms.
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