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World Jewish News
Poland: Auschwitz Described in Comics
30.05.2009
In Poland, artists have decided to add new topics and themes to comic books which appeal to the younger generation. The main heroes of new picture stories are the prisoners and the guards of the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. The first issue tells of the love of two prisoners in Auschwitz.
Adam Cyra, a historian, consultant to the project: "The special attention we pay to the portrait resemblance of the comics heroes with their prototype. We are also interested in the detailed match of the interiors. Personally, I believe that the illustrator was able to depict a concentration camp is the way the prisoners saw it."
Adam Cyra used the archival publications to recreate the human stories of those days. He is a historian, and reads books with great pleasure, but when in the dust of the archives, except for the dry statistics, he found a love story, he surrendered and agreed to advise the artists.
Kazimierz Smolen, a former prisoner of the camp Auschwitz, says: "I do not condemn neither the creators of comics, nor the historians who are helping them. There is nothing seditious in such a narration. To make sure this will not happen again, we need to talk about it in every possible way, and moreover, the story "Love in the shadow of Death" is true."
The first comic is a story about the love of two prisoners, Edward Galinski, a Pole, and Mally Zimetbaum, a Jewish girl. It happened in the notorious camp Auschwitz. Lovers try to escape, but get shot. In the archives there is even a
photograph - the trace of the bullet which killed the girl. There is a similar picture in the comics. However, despite such reality and political correctness, the idea of artists has gained many enemies. People say that the topic of concentration camps, where millions of people died, has no place in such a genre as a comic.
Beata Klos, a publisher (Poland): "We are well aware of this, but unfortunately, sometimes it is the only way to address the young people who belong to the generation of the picture rather than the word. Reading is becoming less
popular, and we do not see another chance to tell young people about Auschwitz, the Holocaust and other horrors of war."
The next comic will be dedicated to a Polish Franciscan monk, Maximilian Kolbe. He also died in Auschwitz, and voluntarily went to doom instead of a stranger. The number of those who want to ban the publication of comics about a man who had been canonized dwindles more and more. The memorials which the artists tell their stories about are being increasingly visited by those who prefer looking at pictures to reading. This means that the idea of the authors, though controversial, has already brought its benefits.
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