A website called The Intercept follows the history of Donald Trump Jr’s now infamous “Skittle Tweet.” In it, Trump’s son asks: “If I had a bowl full of Skittles, and I told you just three would kill you, would you take a handful? That’s our Syrian problem.” The concept dates back at least to 1938 and a children’s book called Der Giftpilz, or The Toadstool, in which a mother explains to her son that it only takes one Jew to destroy an entire people.

In the book, a boy named Franz learns about the Jews from his mother:

“However they disguise themselves, or however friendly they try to be, affirming a thousand times their good intentions to us, one must not believe them. Jews they are and Jews they remain. For our Volk they are poison.”

“Like the poisonous mushroom!” says Franz.

Yes, my child! Just as a single poisonous mushrooms can kill a whole family, so a solitary Jew can destroy a whole village, a whole city, even an entire Volk [nation].”

The Toadstool was written by Julius Streicher, the publisher of Adolf Hitler‘s favorite newspaper, Der Stürmer. which was famous for its anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-communist, and anti-capitalist propaganda. In 1933, soon after Hitler took power, Streicher used his newspaper to call for the extermination of the Jews.

For his twenty-five years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as “Jew-Baiter Number One”. In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution. Each issue of Der Stürmer, which reached a circulation of 600,000 in 1935, was filled with such articles, often lewd and disgusting.

Hitler said: “One must never forget the services rendered by the Stürmer … Now that Jews are known for what they are, nobody any longer thinks that Streicher libelled them.”

Streicher was hanged at Nuremburg in 1946 for crimes against humanity. (via boingboing)