Frieburg Passion Play in the Light of Jewish History

Morris Gest and David Belasco, proceeding with the presentation of the Freiburg Passion Play at the New York Hippodrome despite Jewish protests, continue to arouse the indignation of American Jews.

A correspondent to the Jewish Daily Bulletin who witnessed the Passion Play at the Hippodrome writes:

“Gest in his programs and advertisements dwells on the statement that this Play is presented by the descendants of those who for seven hundred years have produced it at Freiburg in the Duchy of Baden. I wonder if he knows anything about the history of that town. After that community, according to Gest’s chronology, had been fed upon the Passion Play for a century, it witnessed the inevitable result of the inculcation of hatred against the Jews to which that play necessarily contributed. For it was at Freiburg on January 30, 1349, that all of the Jews of that flourishing town, except twelve of the richest, were murdered by the mob. As to those temporarily exempted from the common butchery the evil day was but postponed solely that their property might be discovered and seized.

“Graetz in his “History of the Jews,” vol. 4, p. 107, says that the unfortunate victims were burnt at the stake. It is also significant that following this exhibition of the refining influence of the Freiburg Passion Play, massacres of thousands of Jews occurred in more than a hundred German towns as enumerated in contemporary chronicles and shown in the article on the Black Death to be found in the Jewish Encyclopedia. And yet Gest claiming to be a Jew and asserting that he finds the play harmless is trying to capitalize this conception of medieval ignorance by transplanting it to American soil.”