MCMINN COUNTY, UNION STATION AND MAUS
A few months ago, one of our congregants, Sam H., did a terrific presentation about the graphic novel Maus for his Bar Mitzvah project. Sam looked into the history and development of Maus and talked about how the graphic style helped him better understand the Holocaust. I reread a draft of Sam’s speech today and pulled a few quotes that I especially found enlightening.
“The graphic novel’s illustrations helped me feel the fear that Spiegelman’s family felt as they were hiding from the Nazis.”
“The book is very graphic showing much more than what a book about the holocaust without pictures could show. Art is the author and illustrator and you can tell how his emotions show through the art in the book.”
“I’m more of a visual learner AND I LOVE TO DRAW so if I wanted to read a book about the holocaust I would rather have it in a graphic novel form.”
I thought about Sam and his presentation this week when the McMinn County, TN, school board voted to remove Maus from its 8th grade curriculum because it contains 8 swear words, a roughly drawn illustration of a woman’s breast and violent, disturbing images. As reported in the New York Times, “After reading the minutes of the meeting, Mr. Spiegelman said he got the impression that the board members were asking, ‘Why can’t they teach a nicer Holocaust?’”
In 1933, the Nazis held their first mass book burning – destroying 20,000 books and journals from the library of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft - Institute of Sex Research. Dr. Hirschfeld was a respected, Jewish physician. This was relatively early in the Nazis' reign of horror: 6 years before the outbreak of WWII, 7 years before the opening of Auschwitz and 8.5 before the formalization of the Final Solution.
While the McMinn County school board didn’t destroy Maus and certainly did not organize a book burning, it is a slippery slope from banning to destruction. And, by the decision, they did cut off access for young readers whose exposure to the Holocaust will now be diminished – especially students like Sam who respond better to visual learning.
Just two weeks ago, a gunman held a rabbi and three congregants hostage in Texas. Last night, a vandal spray-painted swastikas on the façade of Union Station. This is the time to inform and teach about the Holocaust, not to ban access to information and learning to young people. Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The best way to honor the victims of Holocaust – make sure it never happens again.