http://badgerherald.com/oped/2008/02/15/cartoon_antisemitic.php

Editor’s note:The following cartoon appeared in a recent edition of the University of Wisconsin Badger Daily. It is followed by this response from a student.

I am writing to express my astonishment after reading a comic in The Badger Herald (“BD Presents,” Feb. 13) that blatantly perpetuated anti-Semitic stereotypes. While I recognize everyone’s freedom of the press, I think it is inappropriate and hurtful to publish a comic with such deep-rooted and offensive stereotypes. As a Jewish student, and one of thousands at this university, I find that many students on this campus throw around stereotypes nonchalantly and without thinking. But the truth is that these stereotypes about Jews being “stingy bastards” and corrupting the media are far from true.

Furthermore, too many people these days take what they read or hear as fact. I’ve traveled around the world and been the first Jew that someone has met, and I’ve had these people check to see if I had horns – a common stereotype about Jews. Many readers of The Badger Herald may not know a lot of Jews and automatically take what they read in your publication as true. This is a scary reality, but it happens every day because people just don’t know better.

Finally, I find this incredibly hurtful because 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime over half a century ago. This is one of the most devastating events of the 20th century, if not of history, and it was caused in part because people heard what lies Adolf Hitler was circulating about the Jews and automatically took them as fact. Six million innocent Jews were brutally gassed, shot and tortured just for being Jewish. Hitler jokes aren’t funny, and they certainly should not have a place in a comic strip.

This was a regime of hate, and it is pathetic to see that this same hate is circulating around a campus that I call home.

So please exercise some good taste and sensitivity, and stop the publication of such hurtful, nasty and untrue stereotypes.

Adina Fradkin

UW undergraduate