UPPER WEST SIDE — More than 50 rare artifacts that chronicle the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany over a 20-year period before World War II are on display in a new exhibit opening next week at the New-York Historical Society.
"Anti-Semitism 1919-1939" borrows anti-Jewish objects from Boston's Museum of World War II, which was founded by collector Kenneth Rendell, who spent 50 years amassing the museum's collection.
In the small but packed exhibit, which opens on April 12, Rendell shares some of the rarest objects he's collected over the years — from signs advertising that Jews are not welcome to a derogatory caricature of a Jewish man in an ashtray.
The exhibit paints a picture of "the march toward the Holocaust" that was gradual and spanned two decades, Rendell explained.
"It is rough collecting it. We have been terribly affected [because] this is really going into the worst aspects of human nature," he said at a preview of the exhibit Thursday.
The objects, especially the signs, are rare because "people destroyed it and American soldiers didn't want it," Rendell noted. He said he was "stunned" when he found the items at German and American flea markets, among other places.
Displayed chronologically, the objects tell the story of the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany starting in 1919 through 1939, when Hitler announced the beginning of the Holocaust.
"Everything is incremental," Rendell said. "It all starts out in a very small way."
In the early 1920s, the Nazis were considered "fringe" and were positioned as just one of many political groups, he said.
But as their influence grew, so did the spread of anti-Semitism. Elaborate signs were carved and printed proclaiming "Jews Aren't Welcome" in the 1930s, and people decorated common objects like a cane or an ashtray with anti-Semitic imagery.
By 1937, "you start to really see the hate pouring out" in German newspapers, signs, household objects and even children's books, Rendell said.
One children's book he included in the exhibit is "extremely vicious," he added.
"While it is painful to see artifacts from a culture of hatred, understanding how such a horrifying moment in history developed is fundamental to helping us better grasp current events," said Louise Mirrer, the president and CEO of the museum, in a statement.
While the exhibition's artifacts are from Germany, "anti-Semitism is essential to the history of our city, as New York was so drastically changed by the influx of Europeans escaping Nazism," she noted.
The exhibit ends on a more personal note, with copies of the passports and visas of one Jewish-German family who got lucky and migrated to England a month before Germany's borders closed prior to the start of the war.
"This family looks like everybody's family," Rendell said.
The exhibit runs through July 31 and is free with museum admission.
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