Julia Kebuladze

March 14, 2022

            The tragedy of the Holocaust began in 1941, when Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe during World War II, wiping out about two-thirds of the global Jewish population, as well as 5 million non-Jews, which included political enemies, Roma, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Now, 81 years later, the generation of people who suffered through and were perpetrators of the Holocaust are dying out; the living witnesses are fading away into written and recorded testimony, their lives reduced to ink blots on a page or recorded voice. The first few months of 2022 have seen the Holocaust brought to the center stage in the news once more, shining a light on the increasingly terrifying reality that is modern day Holocaust education policing, and underlining the importance of accurately teaching this tragedy.

            One way in which the Holocaust has made its way to the headlines is through the banning of the book Maus in a school district in Tennessee. Maus is a graphic novel written by Art Spiegelman that depicts his father, Vladek, before, during, and after the Holocaust. Written in 1991, Spiegelman’s work also includes the dialogue between father and son as he gathers information for the novel, shining a light on relationships and life of Holocaust survivors. This was one of the first works that legitimized the importance of the genre of graphic novels, proving that the use of symbolic imagery in combination with words allows the reader to delve into the content in a powerful way. However, the novel is written with a twist; there are no real humans depicted in the novel. Each group of people is represented as a certain animal: Jews are mice, Nazis are cats, Poles are pigs, and so on. Only in certain panels does Spiegelman reveal that these are animal facts the figures wear.

Maus is commonplace in language arts and literature classes around the nation, read in middle and high school in conjunction with other Holocaust literature. In a recent interview following the banning of the novel, Spiegelman says “I never meant to teach anybody anything…I’m grateful the book has a second life as an anti-fascist tool” [1]. In early January of 2022, a Tennessee school board voted unanimously to ban the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic memoir, removed from its eighth-grade language arts curriculum for profanity and nudity [1], though the only ‘nudity’ in Maus is anthropomorphized, showing stripped down concentration camp prisoners, as well as depicting Vladek’s wife dead in a bathtub. A dissenting school supervisor acknowledged that Maus was an anchor book to begin teaching the Holocaust to children, claiming that “I am very passionate about history, and I would hate to rob our kids of this opportunity” [1]. Spiegelman agrees, saying “…one of the reasons some educators were trying to protect the idea of teaching it in a curriculum, was that it’s in comics form…makes it easy to remember-the visual component as well as with the underlying thoughts that need to be communicated” [1]. This is not the first time Maus has been challenged for being taught in the United States, with it even being totally banned in Russia. Spiegelman has taken this as a bigger issue than his comic book. He views the Tennessee vote as “…part of a continuum, and just a harbinger of things to come…the control of people’s thoughts is essentially to all of this.” He views the school vote a strategic aim to limit what peoples can learn, understand, and think about. “This is a red alert. It’s not just ‘How dare they deny the Holocaust’…They’ll deny anything” [1]. On a brighter note, the recent publicity the book has received has caused a resultant surge in sales, granting it the No. 3 spot on Amazon’s bestseller list.

The banning of the book makes little sense in retrospect. By this logic, a vaguely anthropomorphized nude mouse is reason enough to ban an incredibly influential book about the Holocaust, throwing out an easily digestible form of the genocide to protect thirteen-year-olds (most of whom have already had sex education) from a drawing. Additionally, by that age, most children have already been required to study books with graphic descriptions, such as Lord of the Flies and Night by Elie Wiesel. It is understandable to shield younger children from this novel, as some of the imagery from the concentration camps is disturbing, not to mention the emotional weight of the story itself. However, in the age of the internet, most students by the age of 13 already have unlimited internet access, granting them access to violent video games, graphic Netflix shows, and crude language on YouTube. Maus is tame in comparison, so some speculate there must be other motivations for the banning, especially in a country founded on free speech where banned books seem to contradict the nations values. After all, banned books are not usually banned without religious or political reasons, whether it be an idea, a scene, or a character that defends a morality or political view [2]. The banning is especially detrimental as the general public’s knowledge and awareness of the Holocaust steadily declines, as the genocide becomes more aligned with history rather than modernity.

A lack of proper Holocaust education has resulted in gross misuse of Holocaust imagery and a spread of lies about the genocide. Perhaps this is because only 22 states, less than half of all the United States, require Holocaust education as part of secondary school curricula [3]. Tennessee, where Maus was banned, is one of these states that requires the education; students who study U.S. history, world history, and geography across the state are required to study the Holocaust and genocide as part of the mandated social studies curriculum [4]. These haphazard efforts to educate have proven not to be enough in the United States, as anti-Semitic sentiments remain high in the United States, and one in four American Jews have been a victim of antisemitism over the past year, with 2,100 acts of assault, vandalism, and harassment over the previous year. Despite these statistics, only 40% of Americans think anti-Semitism is a very serious problem [5]. Incredibly concerning still is the use of Nazi symbolism used by far-right extremists in the United States. White supremacist, anti-Semitic, and extremist groups were displayed along with the Trump 2020 banners and American flags at the riot of the US capitol, reminding Americans that these hateful and violent ideologies continue to thrive in the free world: “A rioter inside the capitol wore a camp Auschwitz sweatshirt…The bottom of the shirt reads ‘work brings freedom,’ a rough translation of the words on the gates of Auschwitz” [6]. People have been misusing symbols from the Holocaust in other ways too; many anti-vaxxers have been comparing their ‘discriminatory’ experiences (AKA being denied from certain venues for not wearing a mask or getting vaccinated) by wearing the star of David on their sleeves and saying ‘not vaxxed’. They aim to mimic the Star of David patch worn on the sleeves of the Jewish people during the second world war, marking themselves as subhuman Jews and non-citizens in German-occupied Europe. These disturbing facts are unsurprising in a national context of misinformation; 63% of Americans surveyed in a study did not know 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and a nationwide survey released showed a worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge among adults under 40, including 1 in 10 respondents who did not recall ever hearing the word “Holocaust” before [5]. This misuse of these symbols and lack of understanding is leading to a loss of meaning and understanding of the terrifying event itself, leaving the possibility of a grim repetition of history, as well as diminishing the suffering of the Jewish people by comparing this genocide to first-world issues in a deeply problematic manner.

This lack of education is exacerbated when public figures spread misinformation on the Holocaust. From Holocaust deniers self-publishing their conspiracy theories to news anchors questioning the validity of the Holocaust, the age of the internet and sensationalist media have blurred the line between truth and lies surrounding the tragedy. This misinformation made its way to the headlines recently when Whoopi Goldberg was suspended for two weeks from ABC’s “The View” for her hurtful comments regarding the Holocaust when discussing the banning of Maus. She claimed the “Holocaust isn’t about race”, which she vehemently apologized for in a statement later [7]. This is a misunderstanding that comes from living in a nation where race is largely seen through the lens of black and white: a structural and systemic construct to oppress a group of people deliberately and intentionally. Actor Michael Rapaport responded that the genocide was about race: “It was only about race. It was about kill the Jews, exterminate the Jews. ‘They’re not white, they’re Jewish’. That’s like saying slavery wasn’t about race…not cool…Leave the f***ing Jews alone” [7]. Popular figures with millions of viewers harbor a moral responsibility to provide accurate information on topics such as these, and comments like this exhibit the problem with misinformation surrounding the Holocaust from a narrow-minded American view.

Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies, perfectly encapsulates the root of the issue on misunderstanding surrounding the genocide, saying “Holocaust denial and miseducation is a form of anti-Semitism, and when we fail to actively remember the facts of what happened, we risk a situation where prejudice and anti-Semitism will encroach on those facts” [5]. I agree that this increasing reality of a misinformed nation and a public who does not understand the gravitas of the Holocaust is scarier than having 13-year-old children subjected to the ‘graphic’ aspects of Maus. To guard against history repeating itself, policy must evolve to ensure Holocaust education in all fifty states and ensure that education properly encompasses the historical, cultural, and global impacts of the tragedy.

[1] Michael Cavna. “Art Spiegelman sees the new ban of his book ‘Maus’ as a ‘red alert’”. Washington Post. January 28, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/01/28/art-spiegelman-maus-ban-tennessee-school/ 

[2] Reagan McMahon. “Why Your Kid Should Read Banned Books”. Common Sense Media. January 30, 2022. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/why-your-kid-should-read-banned-books#:~:text=Why%20do%20people%20ban%20books,insensitive%20language%20in%20a%20book

[3] “Where Holocaust Education is Required in the US”. United States Holocaust Museum. https://www.ushmm.org/teach/fundamentals/where-holocaust-education-is-required-in-the-us 

[4] “Tennessee Standards for Holocaust Education”. Tennessee Holocaust Commission. https://tnholcom.org/tn-standards-for-holocaust-education/ 

[5] Kit Ramgopal. “Survey finds ‘shocking’ lack of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Gen Z”. NBC News. September 16, 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/survey-finds-shocking-lack-holocaust-knowledge-among-millennials-gen-z-n1240031

[6] Mallory Simon & Sara Sidner. “Decoding the extremist symbols and groups at the Capitol Hill insurrection”. CNN news. January 11, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/09/us/capitol-hill-insurrection-extremist-flags-soh/index.html 

[7] Colette A.M. Phillips. “What Whoopie Goldberg misunderstood about racism and the Holocaust”. The Boston Globe. February 7, 2022. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/07/opinion/what-whoopi-goldberg-misunderstood-about-racism-holocaust/

Image Credit: Raymond Boyd, Getty Images