What We Are Reading: Graphic Novels & Graphic Memoirs

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A thread to share our reading of Holocaust focused graphic novels and graphic memoirs

Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust by Loïc Dauvillier (Eng 2014) (2012 French)
children's graphic novel
Read in 2014
This Holocaust story is appropriate for the age group and would be an excellent classroom resource. I'd recommend that an adult is present to support the child's reading of it and immediately answer any questions.
A young girl, Elsa, gets up during the night time and sees her grandmother sitting alone on the sofa looking at photos. Elsa cuddles up and askes her what is upsetting her that she can't sleep. The grandmother after some prompting tells her about her experiences during the Holocaust when she was a young girl. The story is set in Paris and covers most of what happened to the Jews there, the girl is eventually taken to live on a farm, after being hidden in a suitcase and rescued by the neighbours when her parents are taken. After the war only the mother returns from the camps. The next morning we find out that the grandmother has never told her son, Elsa's father, about her experiences.
I have to say that I was quite jolted by the illustration of the returned mother, very haunting.
Illustrations by Marc Lizano

Here's an article by Elizabeth Wein about Hidden and a couple of other Holocaust titles for this age group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/books/review/loic-dauvilliers-hidden-and-more....

We are on our own : a memoir by Miriam Katin
Published in 2006

In 1944, Miriam is a bright and happy child living in Budapest with her mother and her dog Rexy. Her father, a dimly remembered figure, is away at the front. Miriam's mother, Esther, worries about the increasing restrictions on Jews, but Miriam's too young to understand the adults' fears. But when her dog is taken away and then they themselves have to move, Miriam struggles to make sense of her world and links their situation to her early lessons about God, often in a very literal way. On the run and relying on the protection of strangers, Miriam and Esther face loneliness, hunger, and fear over and over again during the next year. Finally the war ends, but it is still months before their journey ends.

The sketches in the book are mostly in black and white. Interspersed throughout, however, are a few pages in color. Most of these pages depict Miriam's perspective on her childhood as an adult, now with a child of her own. I found this juxtaposition to be particularly effective and easy to follow because of the use of color. The evolution of the child Miriam's concept of God during this horrible year is mirrored in the adult Miriam's struggles with religion and what she will teach her son. I found this strand of the story to be an important link between past and present, and representative of the effects of trauma on Miriam as an adult.

Miriam's memoir is also the story of her mother's bravery. The drawings of Esther portray a mother desperately trying to keep her daughter safe and, perhaps even harder, innocent. Visually seeing Esther's grief and despair, I leaped immediately to an emotional response, without needing to have it described in words. In a way her grief is beyond words. For me, this was the hardest part of the book to experience and the most beautiful.

Mendel's daughter by Martin Lemelman
Published 2006

Martin Lemelman videotaped his mother's rememberances of life before and during the Holocaust, then didn't look at it for years. After his mother's death, he used the videotapes to as the basis for this memoir, told in his mother's voice and illustrated in a graphic style reminiscent of Art Spiegelman's Maus, but without the frames. Occasionally his uncle's voice takes over the story, and I felt as though I were sitting around the kitchen table listening to my elders talk. It is a very accessible and appropriate for young adult readers as well as adults.

The war within these walls by Aline Sax (Author), Caryl Strzelecki (Illustrator), Laura Watkinson (Translator)
Published 2013

Powerful language combined with stark yet beautiful drawings make this short novel arresting. Although marketed as a young adult novel in the US, I found nothing juvenile about the treatment or the language.

Misha and his family are Polish Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto by the Germans during the Holocaust. As more and more people are forced into the ghetto, the threat of starvation rises. Misha begins crossing to the Aryan side of the wall via the sewers to find food for his family. The knowledge of the underground passages serves him well when he joins a group of Jewish fighters determined to make the Germans pay when they come to liquidate the ghetto.

Similar to a graphic novel, the drawings are integral to the storytelling. Particularly moving was the juxtaposition of black text on white pages with the occasional black page with white text. Although the story of the Warsaw Uprising is well-known, this telling is worth reading for its visual and emotional impact.

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A Family Secret (2007) & The Search (2007) by Eric Heuval
children's graphic novel / Read in 2013

These were produced in cooperation with Anne Frank House and the Resistance Museum of Friesland and serve to educate (Dutch) children about Holland during WW2 and what happened to Dutch Jews. The first one focuses on Helena who is friends with a Jewish girl Esther. The second one is more especially focused on the Holocaust. Both start out in the present day with the grandsons of Esther and Helena making a discovery that brings the past to life.
These are for a younger audience than Maus and have more straightforward artwork in full colour.

Freiheit: The White Rose Graphic Novel - Andrea Grosso Ciponte



I did not know before of the White Rose, an undercover resistence organization of university students during Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany during World War II. Six brave students printed leaflets and distributed them anonymously in an effort to create resistance among the German population to the increasing fascist rule of Hitler. All six were caught by the Gestapo and guillotined.

In this moving graphic novel, we are introduced to those students who gave their lives to attempt to bring freedom back to Germany. At the end of the graphic novel are translations of the leaflets which they distributed. Although Nazi Germany no longer exists, the message this graphic novel is trying to promote is very clear. Do not betray your personal principles to ever, ever give up on freedom. Freedom, Freiheit in German, is the name of this graphic novel which is a lesson in bravery.

The name of Germany is dishonored for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, and atone, smash its tomentors, and set up a new Europe of the spirit.

Slightly off topic but I was reminded of this one and think it has a place here.


The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Will Eisner (2005)
graphic novel / Read 2015
Eisner wanted to give the world an accessible book to explain the history of this antisemitic publication and he worked on this project for several years. I think he succeeds, I found it an interesting read though I doubt that those who need to read this will do so. The artwork is superb.

'Eisner, 86, said, "I was amazed that there were people who still believed `The Protocols' were real...I decided something had to be done." He is fighting for justice in a bleak world, the way his most famous comic-book character, the Spirit, did in American newspapers throughout the 1940's. Enlisting the help of N. C. Christopher Couch, who teaches a course on graphic novels at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the two began piecing together the facts, helped by a French comic-book fan, Benjamin Herzberg. Historians say "The Protocols," first published in 1903, were fabricated in Russia by the czar's secret police as a way of undermining a growing social reform movement. Jews figured prominently in this movement, and the police theorized that they could discredit it by making it appear to be a front for a sinister Jewish agenda.

Mathieu Golovinski, a propagandist, concocted the 24 fraudulent "protocols" or minutes, of an international meeting of Jewish bankers, journalists and financiers outlining a purported Jewish-Masonic plot to dominate world affairs. The forgery was revealed in 1921 when the Times of London published a series of articles demonstrating that the actual source for the text was a a French political satire published in 1864 by Maurice Joly, in which Machiavelli and Montesquieu discuss a plan for world domination by Napoleon III. In "The Plot," which is about 160 pages, Mr. Eisner reveals this fabrication through three different methods that draw on all phases of his 70-year career. In a short introduction he provides an account of how he came upon "The Protocols" and learned the truth behind them. ' from website: myjewishbooks.com
Educational link: The Resilience of Anti-Semitism: The Lies of The Protocols of The Elders of Zion: http://archive.adl.org/education/curriculum_connections/the-protocols/


Although the Protocols has been known to be a complete fabrication it continues to be published in many languages and is a best seller in many Arab countries.
Oct 2014: 'Several publishers from Arab countries displayed books featuring anti-Semitic content, Holocaust denial, and terror glorification, at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week, an annual report from the Simon Weisenthal Center said. The worst offenders were Qatar, a Palestinian publisher, Egypt, and Iran, the report indicated, with examples including children’s books condoning jihad, a text honoring child murderer Sami Kuntar, and an adaptation of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Nablus-based Palestinian Bait Almaqdes Centre featured its texts at a Kuwaiti stand, including the volumes “Jewish Terms: Beware of them!” and “The Zionist Deception Dictionary,” the latter an adaptation of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The “Jewish Terms: Beware of them!” book, authored by Issa Qaddoumi, recommends the term “Islamic East” in place of “Middle East,” “surrendering” instead of “normalization,” “Jews” instead of “Israelis,” and “The Myth of Nazi Crematory” rather than “Holocaust.”' http://www.timesofisrael.com/anti-semitic-books-displayed-at-frankfurt-book-fair...

I just got ( as part of a birthday present) the book-When I Grow Up The Lost Biographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers by Ken Krimstein ( the touchstones are not working) The author had read biographies written by Jewish teenagers for a contest just before the war in Vilna. He turned the work into a graphic novel/illustration format- I'll read it and report .

>9 torontoc: Sounds really interesting. I'll look forward to hearing more.

O.K. Here it is!
When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers by Ken Krimstein This is an amazing graphic novel that uses the newly discovered autobiographies of young people who entered a contest in the late 1930's in Eastern Europe. The story of the saving of these works is quite important and the story told in the introduction of this book. A number of Yiddish scholars who worked at YIVO (an institution based in Vilna that gathered information and research on Jewish culture- it is now based in New York City) decided to fund an autobiography contest. Young people between the ages of 13 and 21 could enter with a written piece that documented any topic that they wanted to write about. No topic was off-limits- family, war years, school, girlfriends, boyfriends, political organizations.
In fact the entries were to be anonymous- there was a code that could identify the winner with out revealing the name. YIVO has over 700 entries. However , the prize was to be awarded in 1939-the beginning of the war. When the Nazis conquered Vilna, they took a number of the YIVO documents to their own institution. The rest of the material was to be destroyed. The efforts of those charged with this task-the Jewish Librarians-managed to smuggle out documents and hide them in the Vilna Ghetto. When the Soviets freed Vilna from the Nazis, the YIVO material was gathered in a Jewish Museum. In 1949 Stalin ordered all this material destroyed. Jewish and Non-Jewish Lithuanians hid as much as they could. 180, 000 documents were hidden in a " decommissioned" church in Vilna. The material was discovered in 2017 .The author of this graphic depiction of six of the autobiographies was able to see them in Vilna. The work is so well done with evocative drawings and graphic images. Some are painterly in style and some are drawn in a " comic " book format. The author actually talked to the son of one of the writers- Beba Epstein was the only writer who was know to have survived-she broke all the rules of the contest. She signed her real name and she was younger that the rules stipulated.
I would recommend this book to both teenagers and adults.

What an amazing story. The documents had to be saved from destruction not once, but twice. Reminds me of the documentary "Who Will Write Our History."

How do we feel about including Magneto Testament in this discussion? On the one hand, it is very heavily researched, includes educational resources, a teacher's guide, multiple pages of end notes with sources, and treats the subject incredibly respectfully. There are no superheroes, costumes, supervillains, or anything of the like, though there are a few panels where David (young Magneto) does exhibit very limited metal control abilities (presumably they grow in strength after the story).

On the other hand, it is a Marvel book, published with the Marvel logo, and education was obviously not the only goal in its publishing. (Though I do genuinely believe it was one goal, of Greg Pak if not the company at large). I can see how some people might take issue with it, or even find it disrespectful or offensive.

I own a copy, and, as was probably obvious from the above, come down on the "pro" side of the question, but I don't want to make assumptions. Thoughts?

>13 Julie_in_the_Library: Interesting question. Until you mentioned it, I had forgotten Magneto's backstory, although I saw the movies. For my part, I want to continue looking at how the Holocaust is portrayed in contemporary culture (both well and ill), so this easily fits within my scope. In fact I may add it to my wish list.

Good-bye Marianne: the graphic novel by Irene N. Watts (2008)
graphic novel / Read in 2019

An adaption of the novel Good-bye Marianne: A Story of Growing Up in Nazi Germany which tells the story of Marianne in the week or so before her mother obtains her a place on the kindertransport.
There are three books in this seriesl. The graphic novel is very good for younger readers, the illustrations are in soft pencil by Kathryn Shoemaker.. Marianne meets a boy who is having a short stay in her apartment building, they share a love of Emil and the detectives but she's Jewish and he's about to join the Hitler Youth, their lives are so different.


There's a follow-up graphic novel Seeking Refuge.

Second Generation: Things I Didn't Tell My Father by Michel Kichka, translated from the French by Montana Kane
Originally published 2012, Eng. translation 2016, 105 p.

Michel Kichka is an Israeli cartoonist and illustrator who was born and raised in Belgium. His father, Henri Kichka, was a survivor of Buchenwald and a well-known and respected educator on the Holocaust. Second Generation is the story of their relationship.

My review is here.

I saw this Museum of Jewish Heritage online event in my daily email from The Hub and thought some people here might be interested:

Drawing it Out: Graphic Novels, Teenagers, and the Holocaust

From the museum's website:
"Graphic novels have long been emerging as a way to tell difficult and often traumatic stories. Since the late 1970s, they have also been a medium for telling stories about the Holocaust. From true stories to fictional ones, graphic novels are used to tell all kinds of stories about this time. Recently, authors and illustrators have been turning to stories about teenagers during the Holocaust.

Join the Museum for a program exploring the depiction of teenagers in Holocaust graphic novels. The program will consist of a conversation between David Polonsky, illustrator of Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation; Ken Krimstein, author of When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teens; and R.J. Palacio, author of White Bird: A Wonder Story. The conversation will be moderated by AJ Frost, Newsletter Editor and Staff Writer for the Comics Beat."

The event is free, with an option to donate if you want.

>17 Julie_in_the_Library: Thank you for posting about this event, Julie. It was very interesting. For those who are interested, it is now online here.

Edited to add link.

While the Holocaust isn't front and center in The Property, it underlies everything that happens in the book. A young woman accompanies her grandmother to Warsaw on the grandmother's first visit to the city since she left as a young woman just before World War II. Grief and sadness are part of the narrative, but so is unexpected romance, the tenderness between grandmother and granddaughter, and comic relief from an interfering acquaintance.

>19 cbl_tn: I really liked this one too.

>20 labfs39: It's a really nice book, isn't it?!