A Long-Ago Scandal

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

The masses of documents now being digitized for the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections Project have few graphic materials. They are mostly manuscripts or communal records. But there are exceptions to that rule.

This political cartoon, from the YIVO collection at the Lithuanian Central State Archive, is one of them. It’s a campaign handout for an independent slate running in a Jewish kehillah [Jewish community council] election, probably in Vilna, and blasts a candidate from a rival slate, a certain Garmentshteyn, head of a food cooperative:

“With the help of the appropriation of the pennies of the poor, the former head of the Food Cooperative now wants to get himself off with a council seat.”

Garmentshteyn, his eyes bulging, his tongue protruding, and his index fingers crossed (a rude gesture) balances one foot on a “council seat” while facing down an angry crowd of more traditionally dressed religious Jews who wield a sign: “We want our money back!” Behind him is a depiction of the food cooperative with an entrance flanked by sacks of sugar and flour. The implication is that he has embezzled donations to the food cooperative.

This is what you get with the Small Merchants slate, no. 21 [handwritten over the printed “20”]. Not one vote for these people!

Everyone: Vote for the only independent slate, no. 13.

Cartoons were ubiquitous in the Yiddish press between the world wars. As scholar Edward Portnoy notes:

This cartoon is a bit more unusual, in that it is printed as an election broadside and was presumably handed out in the street and/or hung up near polling places. The privations of the era (and in particular, the low budget of the Independent Slate Number 13) are hinted at by the fact that it was printed on the back of a program for a classical music concert instead of on new paper stock.

Roberta Newman is YIVO’s Director of Digital Initiatives.