Gunter Grass compares Prophet cartoons to Nazi caricatures

"click" to enlarge - This is the cover to the most infamous issue of Der Stuermer, the 1934 issue accusing Jews of practicing ritual murder to secure the blood of Christians to use in Jewish religious rituals. The headline reads: Jewish Murder Plan against Gentile Humanity Revealed. The issue actually got banned by the Nazis after it had been out for a while, not because of anti-Semitic content, but because it compared alleged Jewish ritual murder with the Christian sacrament of communion - Calvin Archive


manilatimes/afp: German writer and Nobel winner Gunter Grass compared the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which have sparked a global backlash, to Nazi caricatures of Jews.

"I recommend that everyone have a look at the drawings: they remind one of those published in a famous German newspaper during the time of the Nazis, Der Stuermer," he told the weekly news magazine Visao.

"It published anti-Semitic caricatures of the same style."

Der Stuermer (literally, The Attacker) was a Nazi newspaper, which appeared from 1923 to the end of World War II in 1945 and was strongly anti-Semitic.

Its publisher, Julius Streicher [see left], was executed after the Nuremberg war crimes trial.

Grass, whose works include The Tin Drum and Cat and Mouse, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999. His works have a strongly political dimension.

Saying those responsible for the Prophet Muhammad cartoons "are right-wing radicals and xenophobes," Grass accused the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten of deliberate provocation by publishing the cartoons last September despite being warned they would be offensive. Read more