The release of two children’s comic books in Germany illustrating the horrors of the Holocaust has caused controversy amongst the country’s Jewish leadership.
The release of two children’s comic books in Germany illustrating the horrors of the Holocaust has caused controversy amongst the country’s Jewish leadership.
“Auschwitz” by French artist Pascal Croci and “Yossel” by American Joe Kubert use different methods to tell fictional stories, aimed at educating German youngsters.
But both publications have created concern amongst some Jewish leaders that they could be hijacked by right-wing extremists and others that they are inappropriate.
Croci’s book presents an account of life in the notorious Auschwitz death camp told through the eyes of a Yugoslavian couple, using regular comic pictures. Kubert’s offering centres on a 16-year-old boy living in the Warsaw ghetto, and uses pencil drawings mixed in with the comic strips.
The books follow the release of the widely praised comic Maus by Art Spiegelman in the early 1990s which portrayed the Nazis as cats and the Jews as mice. Spiegelman was awarded a Pulitzer prize for his work in America but it was widely condemned in Germany.
Communal Concern
Ezra Cohen, a spokesman for the Dusseldorf Jewish community said he feels the two new comics are also the wrong way to educate about the Holocaust.
“A comic strip is not the appropriate form,” Cohn said. “The subject is too serious to portray in this way.”
Maus has been adopted by a number of German schools as an educational tool coupled with visits to Nazi concentration camps. Depending on their acceptance by the educational institutions Auschwitz and Yossel could join Maus in the classrooms.
Chairman of the German Jewish community Paul Spiegel has expressed his apprehension about the comics’ likelihood of success.
He said: “We will have to watch very carefully indeed whether this kind of treatment really does address the people it is aimed for.”
Some Jewish communal leaders have disagreed with Spiegel and Cohen.
These books have been able to translate the events into visual form quite well," said Christian Bohme, deputy editor of Germany’s largest Jewish newspaper, the Judische Allgemeine Zeitung.
"I understand some people have been concerned, but from my reading of them, despite the fact that they’re comics, the real horror of what happened is still there."
Methods Defended
The books have been defended by their publishers who say they are exactly the right method to reach young people disinterested in history.
Alexandra Germann, an editor in charge of graphic novels at Ehapa, the publishers of both books, said: "They could especially bring younger people to a topic that they might not have looked at so closely in the past, or even adults, who for some reason have blocked it out or need a new way to find a connection with it.”
Germann noted that that both works were researched intensely. Croci spent five years preparing before he actually drew the novel, interviewing eyewitnesses and getting their approval. Kubert also spoke with survivors and used historic photographs as the basis for many of the scenes.