One day in November 1936, my grandfather, Julius Joseph, was surprised by a group of food safety inspectors and police at his tallow factory in Darmstadt, Germany, a small city about a half hour south of Frankfurt. The inspectors berated him for accepting shipments of filthy meat and carcass remnants that were to be melted into tallow. He protested that many of the remnants were for “technical tallow,” which would be turned into shoe polish or soap and thus wouldn’t be consumed. He also pointed out that his company, which had been started by his father nearly 50 years earlier, had never had a problem with food safety. The protests fell on deaf ears and police placed him under arrest.
The major newspaper in Darmstadt published what can only be characterized as a hysterical and hateful account about my grandfather’s arrest, referring to the “vile smell” and “tuberculosis parts” that were included in the meat remnants he was using. Throwing out the term “tuberculosis” during the 1930s, a time before the development of antibiotics, was akin to accusing my grandfather of trying to start an epidemic. And the article hadn’t even gotten to the “good part” yet: Even though my grandfather had served in the German army during World War I, he was called out for “the incredible impertinence with which the Jew still abuses the hospitality of his German guest country…” The logic behind that? Germany had a year before the raid on my grandfather’s factory, passed the Nuremberg Laws, which reduced Jews to second class citizens with few rights, not much different from migrants in today’s U.S.
It all came back to food safety and the inherent dishonesty of Jews, the article concluded: “The nearly unbelievable conditions in this genuine Jewish factory are so scandalous that the strictest measures are barely sufficient in order to prevent such cases in future.” The judge in the case clearly read the article, because my grandfather was held without bail, put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to three years in prison.
For a time after I discovered the newspaper article, I wondered if perhaps my grandfather was guilty—that possibly he was under so much financial pressure from harassment that most Jewish businesses experienced in the three years after Adolf Hitler took power in early 1933 that he cut corners and took unnecessary risks. But as I read through other documents related to his arrest and trial, I realized that the term “tuberculosis” was never brought up again and that no illnesses were reported in connection with his tallow. I also realized that tallow production includes a “kill step,” whereby the fat is heated to about 250 degrees. In addition, other Jewish food owners around Germany were being similarly accused and jailed for alleged food safety viiolations.
What does all this have to do with food safety today? For me, it shows how easily food safety, among other issues, can be used to foment fear and hysteria, especially when problems are associated with a minority group that is being scapegoated, like Jews were in 1930s Germany. When I read about the hysteria that fomented in the newspaper report about my grandfather, my mind jumped to the hysteria created during the 2024 presidential campaign against Haitian immigrants in Ohio who were accused of killing and eating pets. “They’re eating the pets,” then-candidate Donald Trump nearly shrieked in a debate with Kamala Harris that September. And I cringe when I read comments from Mark McAfee of Raw Farm that suggest his company is being unfairly singled out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the likely source of dozens of illnesses from tainted cheese and milk. It’s just too easy today to avoid responsibility with a “What about…” somebody else, or to concoct a conspiracy theory to explain why it couldn’t have been you.
Food-borne illnesses are a serious matter. I know my grandfather would have immediately accepted responsibility and offered to do whatever he could to correct the situation if there was anything approaching a convincing case that he made anyone ill. Even back then, with the remnants of a credible judicial system in place, the officials knew better than to make legal accusations that were totally ridiculous; so they pursued accusations that were pretty much ridiculous, which skilled lawyers could weave into a potential technical problem. So, my grandfather was convicted of fraud, allegedly because a couple of customers returned orders (which were subsequently replaced).
Of course, people in America aren’t just being scapegoated for foodborne illnesses. Immigrants are being rounded up by the thousands and deported for being criminals, even if they’ve lived in the U.S. for years without ever having been in trouble with the law, as I described in a recent article. “Crime” is as good an accusation as “tuberculosis” was 90 years ago.
In the photo above, I’m standing outside the huge prison in Bruchsal, Germany, where my grandfather was imprisoned between 1936 and 1939. The sign on the right warns not to get any closer than where I am standing.
I’m currently in Germany on business and had occasion to visit a prison where my grandfather was held. It’s a huge structure that opened in 1848 and based on an American prison model in Pennsylvania, whereby prisoners were held in individual cells and prohibited from talking and socializing. It’s apparently not like that any more, though the place looks very grim from the outside (see photo). As I walked around this awful place, I couldn’t help but conclude that it’s bad news not only to make false accusations about tainted food, but also to keep kicking up dust against repeated credible accusations against your business.
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