Kekec in the Shameful Abyss

Mrs. Müller brought little Hans to the doctor, visibly worried.

"Doctor, my boy has never caused me so much concern. He’s tired and irritable all day long, even though he has an enormous appetite. Just yesterday at lunch, he ate more than my husband and I together. But he still looks so pale—look at his face, so drawn, and his tired eyes. Something must be wrong."

The doctor examined little Hans and then reassured the mother that the boy would be fine. However, he warned her that any further delay in treatment could have very serious consequences for the boy’s health. Hans had a tapeworm.

"What is a tapeworm?" asked Hans's mother, frightened.

"A tapeworm is a worm that can grow several meters long. Tapeworms live in the human intestines and—dear Mrs. Müller—your Hans has just such a worm in his body," explained the doctor patiently. After a long explanation of the many horrifying things a tapeworm can do to the human body, Hans and his mother went home. There, he obediently took his medicine, which swiftly killed the foreign parasite in his intestines, and brought a smile back to his parents’ faces.

But the story doesn’t end there. To make sure that no thick-skulled reader would miss the message, the author added a moral to this educational tale.

He wrote:

"Tapeworms don’t exist only in the animal world, but also in human form. These are the Jews! … Tapeworms are dangerous because they rob the body of the nutrients it needs to live… Jews behave the same way within the nations they infest… Tapeworms and Jews are the worst kind of parasites. If we want to get rid of them, if we want to become healthy and strong again, there is only one remedy—their extermination."

This little story was published in 1940 in a children's book written by Ernst Hiemer, the second-in-command at the publishing house and namesake of the newspaper Der Stürmer, whose editor-in-chief was Julius Streicher. The publisher was based in Nuremberg, which was quite convenient for Streicher—at least logistically—since he didn’t have to move even when, a few years later, he was tried and convicted of crimes against humanity.

The book compares Jews to a range of invasive or unpleasant foreign and domestic species—drones, hyenas, locusts, bedbugs, vipers, even bacteria—but the tapeworm stands out with certain features that might still appeal to modern-day fans of comparing humans to repugnant animal species. Tapeworms, or cestodes in Latin, are worms. They have suckers and hooks on their heads, clearly symbolizing foreignness, invasiveness, and parasitism. They also produce offspring in staggering numbers, laying millions of eggs. And the crowning insult: tapeworms don’t reproduce as male and female—they are hermaphrodites, a slap in the face to all those who hold sacred the traditional family.

And while we’re talking about analogies, there are people who feel that certain recent events are just begging to be compared to Mr. Hiemer, editor Streicher, and Der Stürmer.

Others argue that historical comparisons like these are unhelpful, because they give extremist and racist provocateurs exactly what they want: attention. This line of reasoning assumes that if we simply ignore today’s Hiemers and Streichers long enough, they’ll eventually give up and go away. Maybe—but by that same logic, one would have to believe that Hitler rose to power simply because people were too squeamish about his pre-genocidal ranting and hatred.

There are other opinions, though. Irish literary and theatre critic and columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote a few months ago that to understand what’s happening in today’s world, we need to consider two things. First: we are living in a time of testing. Second: what is being tested is fascism. O’Toole says it’s a word we should use carefully, but without hesitation, when it so clearly appears on the horizon.

"In a functioning democracy, fascism doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It’s not easy to get people to abandon their ideas of freedom and civility. Testing is necessary, and when successful, it serves a dual purpose: it helps prepare people to accept things they initially resisted; and it allows us to improve and fine-tune our approach," O’Toole wrote.

"You have to erode the boundaries of morality, get people to accept acts of extreme cruelty. Like dogs, people must be accustomed to the sight of blood. They must acquire a taste for savagery. Fascism does this by instilling fear of despised minorities. That enables the dehumanization of those groups. Once that is achieved, you can build further—from smashed windows to extermination."

Maybe Fintan O’Toole was describing the situation in his own uncivilized and wild Ireland, and we can comfort ourselves by thinking that such a thing couldn’t happen here. And yet, while some are busy rewriting Kekec’s adventures—now featuring a bearded Muslim harassing the innocent Mojca and Pehta hiding an explosive belt under her burka—we should not forget how, during Hans’s struggle with the evil tapeworm, Hans’s father and his uniformed comrades were defending their country against multiculturalism.