Line #54 Main/JewsPlayingNazis


1	->''"Guess what, Hitler? You're being played by a Jew right now. And it's the loudest, most annoying Jew we could possibly find!"''
2	-->-- '''[[Literature/TheDiaryOfAYoungGirl Anne Frank]]''' (Rachel Feinstein) to '''UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler''' (Creator/GilbertGottfried), ''Historical Roasts''
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4	UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust are incredibly touchy topics for media. This is especially true for Jewish communities, many of whom are aware of family and friends who perished during it--or in some cases, lived through it themselves. Many Jewish creators have written, produced, or starred in works about the war, oftentimes focusing on the harrowing experiences of Jews during that time. And then there's the matter of casting the actors who'll play the Nazis.
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6	The reasons for why a Jewish actor would be cast as a Nazi vary. Historically, it was because many of the German-born actors in Hollywood were themselves Jewish, and often went there precisely because the Nazis forced them out of the German film industry. Other motivations include [[AdolfHitlarious satirizing the Nazis]] by casting actors of the race they despised most or making sure that there's no possible room for their depiction of Nazis to be glorified by present-day anti-Semites. There's also a certain degree of NWordPrivileges to it, with Jews being able to push the envelope further with depictions of Nazism due to their history of being victimized by them.
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8	Another reason is more pragmatic: Especially soon after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, many Jewish people spoke native German or its close relative, Yiddish. This allowed for a believable German accent on screen, without the risk of employing ''actual'' former Nazis.
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10	A subtrope of IronyAsSheIsCast. Compare BritishNazis, CastingGag, FakeNationality, and ThoseWackyNazis; see also Main/WorksSetInWorldWarII and WorksSetInWorldWarII/TheHolocaustInMedia. Contrast ActorSharedBackground. Not to be confused with characters who are both Jewish and Nazis or anti-Semites, which would fall under BoomerangBigot.
11	----
12	!!Examples:
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14	[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
15	* ''Film/TheBeliever'': Carla, Danny's girlfriend, is played by Summer Phoenix, who's Jewish (as her mother was born to Jewish parents), though has never practiced Judaism. Her character starts out as a Neo-Nazi, while she's involved with Danny (a secret self-hating Jew), gets drawn to Judaism and starts practicing the religion, so it gets interesting considering Phoenix's own background.
16	* ''Film/BlacKkKlansman'':
17	** Topher Grace, who's of partial Jewish descent, plays KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.
18	** An InUniverse example: Flip Zimmerman (Creator/AdamDriver), Ron Stallworth's Jewish coworker in the Colorado Springs Police Department, works with Ron to pose as a white supremacist and infiltrate the local KKK chapter.
19	* In ''Film/BladeII'', though not explicit in the final film, Reinhardt was originally written as a Neo-Nazi vampire. He's played by Jewish actor Creator/RonPerlman.
20	* ''Film/{{Borat}}'': The eponymous Borat Sagdiyev, a virulent antisemite from Kazakhstan, is played by Jewish comedian Creator/SachaBaronCohen.
21	* ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'':
22	** Creator/ConradVeidt, who plays Major Strasser, fled Nazi Germany because his wife was Jewish, and would list himself as Jewish on identification documents in a show of solidarity with her. Veidt noted the irony of being praised "for portraying the kind of character who had forced him to leave his homeland."
23	** Most of the Nazis were played by Jews for practical reasons, as they made up a good chunk of the German actors available in Hollywood during World War II.
24	* Creator/PeterLorre as the Nazi Sergeant Berger in the wartime film ''The Cross of Lorraine''.
25	* ''Film/TheDesertFox'' had Luther Adler, a Russian-American Jew, as Adolf Hitler.
26	* ''Film/TheDictator'': Sacha Baron Cohen plays Admiral-General Aladeen, who (like many other Muslim dictators) despises Israel and [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain Jews as a whole]].
27	* ''Film/DrStrangelove'': Creator/PeterSellers, who was Jewish on his mother's side, plays the eponymous Dr. Strangelove, an eccentric DoctorVonTurncoat (and [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed parody of real ex-Nazis]] like Wernher von Braun) who now works for the United States government.
28	* ''Film/GlassOnion'': Birdie Jay, an influencer and model who's been banned from social media for using an anti-Semitic slur, is played by Jewish actress Creator/KateHudson.
29	* ''Film/TheGreyZone'': Creator/HarveyKeitel plays Erich Mußfeldt, the SS officer who oversaw the ''Sonderkommando'' (Jewish slave laborers who manned the crematoria) in Auschwitz.
30	* ''Film/JojoRabbit'': Jojo's {{imaginary friend}} Adolf Hitler is played by director Creator/TaikaWaititi, who is half-Maori and half-Jewish.
31	* ''Film/JudgmentAtNuremberg'': Werner Klemperer plays Emil Hahn, a Nazi official on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg who remains unrepentant throughout the trial.
32	* ''Film/LordsOfChaos'': Jewish actor Creator/EmoryCohen plays Varg Vikernes, who in real life is an outspoken neo-Nazi and white supremacist. Needless to say, the real Varg was [[DisownedAdaptation not amused]], both by the choice of actor and how the film portrays him as the villain.
33	* In ''Film/AnOfficerAndASpy'', Creator/MathieuAmalric (who's of Jewish descent) played Alphonse Bertillon, an antisemitic graphology "expert" who uses some InsaneTrollLogic to accuse Alfred Dreyfus.
34	* ''Film/OperationDaybreak'': Creator/AntonDiffring plays SS official UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich, architect of the Holocaust (though that aspect is not brought up in the film) and target of the film's assassination plot. Diffring, being both gay and Jewish, had to flee Nazi Germany to avoid persecution (and eventually death) in the 1930s.
35	* ''Film/TheProducers'': Creator/MelBrooks has a voice cameo in ''Springtime for Hitler'' as one of the Nazi dancers who says the line "Don't be stupid, be a smarty[=/=]Come and join the Nazi Party!"
36	* ''Film/Stalag17'': Creator/OttoPreminger plays Colonel von Scherbach, the commandant of the eponymous POWCamp.
37	* ''Film/TheThreeStooges'': The Stooges, all of whom were born and raised Jewish, starred in ''Film/YouNaztySpy'' (the first anti-Nazi comedy in Hollywood history) and ''Film/IllNeverHeilAgain'', where they play the fascist leaders of Moronika.
38	* ''Film/ToBeOrNotToBe'':
39	** In the 1942 original, Josef Tura (a Polish gentile, though played by Jewish actor Creator/JackBenny), disguises himself as a Nazi official as part of a scheme to help members of the Polish resistance flee the country.
40	** The 1983 remake features Creator/MelBrooks in the lead role. Instead of disguising himself as a mere Nazi official, his plot involves pretending to be Hitler himself.
41	[[/folder]]
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43	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
44	* ''Series/AlloAllo'': The Jewish actor Creator/SamKelly plays Nazi captain Hans Geering. This led to the rumour that Geering only ever says 'tler!' as opposed to 'Heil Hitler' because Kelly didn't want to give the full salute, but Kelly always stressed that he felt Geering was the sort of person who simply couldn't be bothered to say the whole thing (and that as an actor, he wouldn't get many roles if he refused to say lines that he considered offensive).
45	* ''Series/{{The Boys\|2019}}'': [[spoiler:Creator/AyaCash plays Stormfront, a SuperSupremacist who's later revealed to be a literal Nazi who's over a century old]].
46	* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': Creator/EdAsner, who was Jewish, played a Nazi who hid as a Holocaust survivor in "[[Recap/CSINYS05E22 Yahrzeit]]".
47	* Creator/{{Netflix}}'s ''Historical Roasts'': In the roast of Anne Frank, Creator/GilbertGottfried plays Adolf Hitler. At the end, Anne Frank (played by Rachel Feinstein) brags about how Jews survived his attempts to eradicate them and that his actor is "the loudest, most annoying Jew we could find."
48	* ''Series/HogansHeroes'':
49	** POW camp officer Colonel Klink and his inept lackey Sergeant Schultz were played by Werner Klemperer and John Banner, both Jews who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Most notably, Klemperer only took the part on the condition that Klink would be perpetually inept and always get outsmarted by the protagonists.
50	** Two recurring villains are General Burkhalter and Major Hochstetter, who were played by Jewish actors Leon Askin and Howard Caine, respectively. Askin was born in Austria and fled to America in 1940 after persecution by the Nazis.
51	** Other actors of Jewish descent who appeared in minor roles as Nazis and camp officials include Oscar Beregi Jr. as General Stauffen and Walter Janovitz as Oscar Schnitzer, the camp's guard dog trainer (who's secretly sympathetic to the resistance).
52	* In the 1973 Soviet miniseries ''Series/SeventeenMomentsOfSpring'', about a Soviet mole in UsefulNotes/TheGestapo in 1945, Leonid Bronevoy, a then-famous Jewish comic actor, played Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller as [[AffablyEvil a downright likable and witty guy]], when he wasn't threatening to torture people.
53	* ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone\|1959}}'':
54	** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E10JudgementNight Judgement Night]]", Jewish American actor Creator/NehemiahPersoff plays Carl Lanser, [[spoiler:a submarine captain in the Kriegsmarine]].
55	** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E2TheManInTheBottle The Man in the Bottle]]" has Luther Adler, a Russian-American Jew, playing the part of Adolf Hitler due to a wish gone horribly wrong.
56	** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S3E9DeathsHeadRevisited Deaths-Head Revisited]]", former concentration camp commandant Gunter Lütze is put on trial by the ghosts of his victims. Lütze was played by Oscar Beregi Jr., whose father was a Jewish actor from Hungary.
57	[[/folder]]
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59	[[folder:Theatre]]
60	* ''Theatre/MarginForError'': Creator/OttoPreminger played Consul Karl Baumer, a Nazi German diplomat whose murder sets the plot in motion, in both its 1939 Broadway run and its 1943 film adaptation.
61	* In ''Theatre/SpiesAreForever'', Jewish actor Creator/BrianRosenthal plays [[NaziNobleman Dr. Baron von Nazi]].
62	[[/folder]]
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64	[[folder:Web Animation]]
65	* ''WebAnimation/IfDisneyCartoonsWereHistoricallyAccurate'': The princess is anti-Semitic, and is voiced by Jewish actress Creator/RachelBloom.
66	[[/folder]]
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68	[[folder:Western Animation]]
69	* ''WesternAnimation/DrawnTogether'': Downplayed. Princess Clara is a Christian [[TheFundamentalist fundamentalist]] who is known for her anti-Semitic views. Her voice actress Creator/TaraStrong is Jewish.
70	* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': Being the ManOfAThousandVoices he is, during any of the {{Wartime Cartoon}}s that featured Hitler, he was voiced by Creator/MelBlanc, a born Jew, making an absolute mockery out of him.
71	* The Nazi villain Red Skull has been voiced by two Jewish voice actors in Creator/MarvelAnimation series: Creator/SteveBlum in ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' and Creator/DavidWarner in ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries''.
72	[[/folder]]

Context Main / JewsPlayingNazis