|
June 2008 |
by
Kristy Boney
It is
inevitable. Every year there is always at least one student
in my German class who only wants to talk about Adolf
Hitler and the Nazis, World War II, and all the information
they have gleaned from the latest program about Germany’s
sordid and blood-stained past on the History channel. I
always appreciate the curiosity to learn, but I am
consistently disappointed that the interest begins and ends
with spectacle—there is never much engagement beyond the
“Did you know that . . .?” or “Can you believe that . . .
?” If there is one thing I have learned in my studies of
German history and literature it is this: There is no good
way to criticize a story about the Holocaust. The subject
matter is too weighty, too overwhelming, too gruesome, and
too tragic that criticism of such art which deals with
Germany’s greatest sin comes across as callous, inhumane,
and ignorant. Yet, to allow for such a significant period
of history to remain only as tantalizing trivia is just as
callous, inhumane, and certainly ignorant. So to come
across Dave Sim’s Judenhass
[Jew
Hatred], was refreshing in the hope that his project to
“allow even the slowest reader and the most reluctant
teacher to comprehend and convey some measure of the
enormity of the Shoah and the profound level of enmity
against Jews which made it possible” would offer me new
ways to teach the students about culture and history and
learn about the violent lessons of intolerance and racial
hatred.
While impeccably and realistically drawn, using sources of
photorealism, Sim begins his tale with the acknowledgment
“that every creative person should consider doing a work
addressing the Shoah,” and briefly wonders what the comics
medium would have been like if such heavyweights such as
Will Eisner, Joe Simon, Joe Schuster, Jack Kirby, and other
Jewish notables had been born in Germany rather than
America. A sickening thought, but that’s the point—such an
assertion is a strong start to ponder and discuss the
hatred of the Jewish nation that began long before Hitler
came to power. Sim doesn’t follow this train of thought for
long, however, and the project teeters between chronicling
history and becoming a post-modern montage of
sensationalistic horror.
It is this grey area of sensationalizing history where I
find Sims’ latest project troubling. The artwork taken from
photographs is detailed, concrete and poignant when placed
next to a derogatory definition about the Jewish nation
such as Judenrein
[the
cleansing of the Jews] or die
Endloesung, a Nazi
euphemism that replaced the terms “murder,” “gassing,” or
“genocide.” Similarly, Sim’s rendering of close-ups, taken
of corpses found in concentration camps juxtaposed with
quotes from Martin Luther, Mark Twain, and of course Adolf
Hitler provide a mosaic of repulsion from which one wishes
to look away, but much like a horror movie can’t. Granted,
presenting the Holocaust can—and some argue must always—be
graphic. But there should always be a balance between
presenting the Holocaust and Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung
(a
German term that means “coming to terms with the past”).
When the project presents the evidence without seeking to
find meaning and understanding in the millions murdered, it
becomes a way to deal with history superficially that
latches onto—and maybe even fetishizes—the blood and
macabre—and does not instruct, but merely tantalizes.
Sim is not alone in his attempt to pay tribute, and I do
respect him for engaging with the material, even if it
borders on the sensational. The sensationalism is the same
with many movies, and it even rears its ugly head at
Washington D.C.’s Holocaust museum—an effort meant to
stimulate persons to confront hatred. One walks in, takes
an identity and at the end of the tour, and learns if s/he
has survived or perished. And all this allows the visitor
to shudder and be cathartically grateful that s/he is in a
different time and—more often than not—of a different
nation. The sins of the past are real, and the lessons to
be learned—of the history of the Jewish nation, of the
cultural tension between Jews and other beliefs, of moral
responsibility, and of tolerance and humanity—are tangible
and within reach when learning about the Holocaust. I wish
Sim had stuck with his original notion of “What if. . .”
and followed through to make these socio-cultural and
political lessons of the Jewish nation more applicable.
Even with the undercurrent that the past is not dead, and
that, despite the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is still today
alive and thriving, the message gets undercut by the
impulse to shock and disgust, rather than provoke and
teach.
