Using Comics To Educate About The Holocaust

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What if that deeper study involves looking at revisionist arguments?

To help American kids experience the Holocaust so they can make their own decisions as to how deeply they want to go into further study.

Using Comics To Educate About The Holocaust

By: Susan Karlin

Legendary comic illustrator Neal Adams and Holocaust historian Rafael Medoff team up on a series of motion comic videos profiling Americans of all faiths who spoke out against the Nazi genocide for a Disney DVD that debuts at San Diego Comic-Con.

For several years, legendary comic illustrator Neil Adams and Holocaust historian Rafael Medoff have partnered on projects that use comics and animation to teach about the Nazi genocide.

Their first DVD--They Spoke Out: American Voices of Protest Against the Holocaust--debuts at San Diego Comic-Con with an exclusive July 19 screening and panel discussion with Adams and Medoff. Episodes can be viewed at TheySpokeOut.com, and the DVD will be on sale at booths 1709 and 1829, where Adams will be signing copies.

"We’re not throwing the Holocaust at you," says Adams. "We’re offering a way to help American kids experience the Holocaust through these videos, so they can make their own decisions as to how deeply they want to go into further study."

Created by Disney Educational Productions and the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C., it features six 10-minute motion comic episodes illustrated and mostly narrated by Adams--best known for his dynamic style and work on Batman and X-Men--and written by Medoff, the Wyman Institute director and author of 14 books. The episodes blend traditional animation and comic book-style illustrations with newsreel footage, photographs, and historical documents.

"Teens raised on YouTube, video games, and other visual media are likely to be more receptive to comic books about the Holocaust than heavy textbooks about the Holocaust," says Medoff. "This presents today’s educators with a whole new set of challenges."

One episode, Messenger from Hell, is narrated by former Marvel Comics chairman Stan Lee, cocreator of Spider-Man, Hulk, and the Fantastic Four. Messenger tells the story of a Polish courier, Jan Karski, who smuggled himself into the Warsaw Ghetto and the outskirts of the Belzec death camp, then risked his life to bring the news of the Holocaust to the free world. The DVD release coincides with the 70th anniversary of Karski’s meeting at the White House with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Another episode is The Dina Babbitt Story about a teenage cartoonist and future Warner Brothers animator who survived Auschwitz by painting prisoner portraits for Josef Mengele. Before Babbitt died in 2009, Adams and Medoff (along with the late comic legend Joe Kubert) attempted to retrieve her art from The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland, by auctioning original artwork by noted comic illustrators to earn money for her legal bills.

"My work with Neal Adams began when I approached him about Dina Babbitt’s struggle--she was an artist fighting for the return of her original art," says Medoff. "Neal had led the courageous and successful fight in the 1970s to convince comic book publishers to return original art to the artists. As Neal and I were talking about ways to help publicize Dina’s cause, he said, 'Let’s do a comic strip about it.' The strip was called The Last Outrage and was published by Marvel. That brought a tremendous amount of attention to Dina’s plight. Then Disney Educational Productions suggested making’The Last Outrage into a motion comic, which led to the They Spoke Out series."

A page from a middle school student’s graphic novel on Josef Mengele

Jeremy Johnson, a PhD student in the University of Minnesota’s Art Education program, observed firsthand the power that comics have in increasing educational involvement, which he discussed at a July 18 Comic-Con panel called Teaching Comics.

Earlier this spring, Johnson consulted on an experimental lesson that had Wisconsin middle school students studying the Holocaust by creating mini graphic novels on the subject, rather than writing research reports.

“We asked them to create narratives around the facts they found,” says Johnson. “Ninety-eight percent of them said they learned more by creating comics than by repeating facts they pulled off the Internet or out of a book. They were more interested and emotionally invested.”

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1683396/usi ... -holocaust

[borjastick]

Disgusting to influence and indoctrinate youngsters this way. It is emotional posturing and designed to sway their feelings and actions towards Germans and Germany. I would add that I am also against any other coercion of youth to subjects such as religion and politics and on touchy subjects such as abortion.

[diaz52]

I collected comic books for years (big, heavy, space consuming, highly perishable, expensive, mistake) and Neil Adams is a veritable god of an artist. As a boy I also had the Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books with Neil Adams covers. Wow, what an artist. I always loved Joe Kubert, too. Another great artist. Loved his work on SGT Rock. Too bad to see both of these legends being used like this. Adams is Jewish so maybe he's just doing what he can to support the team, dunno.

[hermod]

Porn Holocaust comics - the Israeli "Stalags" comic books - have been the source of most post-Nuremberg Holocaust horror tales for decades. In 1953 the Israeli writer K. Tzetnik published the book "Doll's House", the story of a character purporting to be the author's sister, serving the SS as a sex slave in Block 24, the notorious Pleasure Block in Auschwitz. The very Zionist New York Times called Tzetnik "the first author to tell the story of Auschwitz in Hebrew and a hero of the mainstream Holocaust literary canon" in 2007. Tzetnik's "Doll's House" was the source of the Israeli "Stalags" Comics of the 1960's. Tzetnik's book and the "Stalags" were the source of many horror tales told by the 'Holocaust survivors' at the Eichmann 'Trial'. And as those horror tales were the source of most of (if not all) the horror tales told by 'Holocaust survivors' after the Eichmann 'Trial', it can be said that Tetznik is in fact one of the fathers of the Holocaust narrative as it is today.

Israel's Unexpected Spinoff From a Holocaust Trial

The New York Times

September 6, 2007

JERUSALEM, Sept. 5 -- It was one of Israel's dirty little secrets. In the early 1960s, as Israelis were being exposed for the first time to the shocking testimonies of Holocaust survivors at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a series of pornographic pocket books called Stalags, based on Nazi themes, became best sellers throughout the land.

After decades in dusty back rooms and closets, the Stalags, a peculiar Hebrew concoction of Nazism, sex and violence, are re-emerging in the public eye. And with them comes a rekindled debate on the cultural representation here of Nazism and the Holocaust, and whether they have been unduly mixed in with a kind of sexual perversion and voyeurism that has permeated even the school curriculum.

"I realized that the first Holocaust pictures I saw, as one who grew up here, were of naked women," said Ari Libsker, whose documentary film "Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel" had its premiere at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July and is to be broadcast in October and shown in movie theaters.

Hanna Yablonka, a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, says the film highlights what she calls the "yellow aspects of nurturing the memory of the Holocaust."

Mr. Libsker's 60-minute documentary puts the Stalags under a spotlight for the first time and exposes some uncomfortable truths. One is that the Stalags were a distinctly Israeli genre, created by Israeli publishers and penned by Israeli authors, although they had masqueraded as translations from English and were written in the first person as if they were genuine memoirs.

Until the Eichmann trial began in 1961, the voices of the Holocaust had hardly been heard in Israel.

In the movie, the publisher of the first Stalag, Ezra Narkis, acknowledges that it was the trial, in all its sensational and often gory detail, that gave momentum to the genre.

More provocatively, the movie contends that Stalag pornography was but a popular extension of the writings of K. Tzetnik, the first author to tell the story of Auschwitz in Hebrew and a hero of the mainstream Holocaust literary canon. K. Tzetnik "opened the door," and "the Stalag writers learned a lot from him," Mr. Narkis said.

K. Tzetnik was a pseudonym for Yehiel Feiner De-Nur. The alias, short for the German for concentration camper, was meant to represent all survivors, a kind of Holocaust everyman. One of K. Tzetnik's biggest literary successes, "Doll's House," published in 1953, told the story of a character purporting to be the author's sister, serving the SS as a sex slave in Block 24, the notorious Pleasure Block in Auschwitz.

Though a Holocaust classic, many scholars now describe it as pornographic and likely made up.

"It was fiction," said Na'ama Shik, a researcher at Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. "There were no Jewish whores in Auschwitz."

Yet "Doll's House" and other writings of K. Tzetnik, who died in 2001, are treated as historical fact by many in Israel, and are included in the high school curriculum. Mr. Libsker's movie shows the vice principal of an Israeli school guiding a group of teenagers through Auschwitz, pointing out Block 24 and quoting from K. Tzetnik.

Sidra Ezrahi, a professor of comparative Jewish literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said, "His books were so graphic and so barbaric." Maybe at first they had an important impact, she said. "But over time," she added, "if this is what they have chosen to leave in the Israeli curriculum, it's a scandal."

For many Israelis, the most dramatic part of the Eichmann trial was the testimony of K. Tzetnik. His true identity was revealed for the first time on the witness stand, where he passed out. Simultaneously, the Stalags were reaching the peak of their commercial success.

Yechiel Szeintuch, a professor of Yiddish literature at the Hebrew University, rejects any link between the smutty Stalags and the writings of K. Tzetnik as "an original sin." He insists K. Tzetnik's work was based on reality.

But Mr. Libsker, 35, himself the grandson of Holocaust survivors, contends that it is the same mixture of "horror, sadism and pornography" that serves to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust in the Israeli consciousness to this day.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/07/09/Stalag_filth.html

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Holocaust Education Through Comics

On the heels of its pioneering Holocaust-themed “motion comics,” Washington D.C.’s David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies is launching a major initiative enlisting comics luminaries to educate Americans about the Shoah and other genocides.

Comics Creators for Holocaust Education is bringing together artists, writers and editors from the worlds of comic books, animation, and science fiction, according to its fundraising material. And the response — from towering figures like Stan Lee, Joe Quesada, Harlan Ellison, and Art Spiegelman — has been “overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic,” said Rafael Medoff, the Wyman Institute’s director.

The initiative will let the Wyman Institute expand its program of creating Holocaust-themed cartoons for print and online media, which have included work by Spiegelman in The Washington Post and Sal Amendola in The New Republic; artists will also explore new ways to disseminate cartoons across platforms. And Medoff plans to use Comics Creators for Holocaust Education as a platform to reach a much broader audience.

“Now that we’ve created an initial body of work — including editorial comic strips for major newspapers and the ‘They Spoke Out’ DVD with Disney — we’re going to be introducing these materials to the comics world, to teachers, and to the general public,” he said. “We’re holding workshops and panel discussions at major comic conventions, such as the recent San Diego Comic Con, which 150,000 people attended, and the upcoming New York Comic Con, which will have over 100,000. At the same time, we’re actively networking with teachers around the country to have these materials used in classrooms. And we’ll be communicating to the public as well, in the same way that the daily editorial cartoons in major newspapers use cartoon art as a vehicle for commenting on serious issues.”

CCHE’s next major push will be a book co-authored by Medoff and noted comics historian Craig Yoe due in 2014. “Cartoonists Against the Holocaust” “will have over 125 editorial cartoons from U.S. newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s about what was happening to the Jews in Europe, with historical commentary,” Medoff said. “It’s mainly intended as a text for high schools — it’s a way to look at the Holocaust, and the American response to it, through the eyes of cartoonists at the time. But adults will find it interesting as well.” Another plan on the drawing board calls for a comic book about a 1930s controversy over “Mein Kampf,” Medoff said.

Rather than the magical realism of many comics, a straightforward approach works best for massive subjects like the Holocaust, Medoff said.

“My colleagues and I are finding that the most compelling technique is to use both — that is, stick carefully to the historical record, but find the real-life stories that people will find most interesting, and use artwork — especially cartoon or comic book art — to liven it up so the reader will want to keep reading until the end.”

Joe Rubenstein, a celebrated veteran artist for DC and Marvel who collaborated with Medoff on a comic for the Los Angeles Times called “Prosecuting Genocide,” told the Forward that comics make an ideal educational vehicle. “I think using comics as a tool to teach history in general and the Holocaust in particular in this case makes the subject easier to access, see, and retain for students of any age,” he said. “I’m proud to be part of the Wyman Institute’s Comics Creators for Education. These kinds of projects really make a difference.”

Do readers of comics ever have trouble understanding that what they’re reading isn’t fiction — and actually took place?

“It used to be more of a problem than it is now,” Medoff said. “There was a time when anything that was done in comic book style was assumed to be fiction. In recent years, though, there have been many graphic novels dealing seriously with historical subjects. So the public is starting to get used to the idea that serious, accurate history can be depicted in a comic book style.”

But, he added, “it would help reduce confusion if those comic books or graphic novels that deal with historical topics but are actually fiction would have an explicit disclaimer on page one.”

Holocaust Education Through Comics ? The Arty Semite ? Forward.com

[Hannover]

Considering how comical the 'holocaust' storyline really is, the use of comic books is the appropriate medium.

thought for the day:
Not a single verifiable excavated mass grave as alleged can be shown. Not one.

The tide is turning.

- Hannover

[borjastick]

I find the use of comic cartoon books etc an insidious and deceitful way to brainwash youngsters. It is wrong, just as when I was at school we had a mad Religious Education teacher filling us full of Jesus, the Israelites etc with never a chance of discussing other belief systems. But that was in the early 70s when Britain was almost exclusively white Christian. We are now in a supposedly enlightened period with mass education and information available to the masses.

Isn't it time people were able to take a broader view or have they too much to lose, this is surely an act of desperation.