Since the 1940s, various artists have depicted the horrors of the Holocaust in comics – even “classics” such as those starring Superman and Captain Marvel. In a 1940 comic book entitled “How Superman Would End the War” (” How Superman Would Stop War”) Superman tells Hitler: “I’d love to punch you in the face.” According to the Pittsburgh Holocaust Center, Joseph Goebbels characterized Superman as a Jew.

Superheroes take on Nazis

Captain America, an American comic book character and superhero, with his distinctive uniform in the colors of the US flag, also faced various Nazi characters, while during World War II the fascist villains also appeared frequently in the cartoons of Dr. Suss (Theodor Suss Geisel), American comic book designer and author of children’s books.

Stories surrounding Jewish resistance to concentration camps were also drawn into Superman and Captain Marvel comics. The latter’s comics were indeed the first to deal with the Holocaust – it was no coincidence that these comics were often drawn by Jewish artists, such as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Holocaust researcher Raphael Medoff co-authored the book We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust, a book that helped especially young Americans growing up in the 1960s and 1970s to learn more about the Holocaust. – until then this chapter of history was not taught in schools.

“Master Race” – The fear of a Holocaust survivor

“Master Race”, one of Marvel’s most classic comics, was the culmination of the golden age of comics in 1955. It had a swastika painted on its cover.

The author of “Maste Race” was Al Feldstein, while the creator of the drawings was Bernard Krigstein. The comic tells the story of Karl Weissmann, a German who escaped from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and immigrates to the USA. The ghosts of the past but they continue to haunt him.

“You will forever be afraid, you will forever remember… the horror… the hate… the pain,” says the narrator, as Weisman sits on a train and remembers everything he experienced in the concentration camp.

The transfer of “Maus”

Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, presents a Holocaust metaphor, depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as bloodthirsty cats.

Spiegelman tells the story of his parents, two Polish Jews who were expelled by the Nazis and made it out of Auschwitz alive. How does a boy, born shortly after the war in Sweden, react to the horrific memories of his father? How does this affect him personally and professionally? “Maus” was the American cartoonist’s answer. At the same time, the comic is based on several hours of interviews the artist took with his father in the 1970s – his mother had committed suicide in 1968.

Spiegelman was heavily criticized for the way he chose to symbolize the Jews – as well as for presenting the story as a graphic novel. Critics argued that the cartoonist was breaking certain taboos, that the complex story of the Holocaust could not simply be told in comics. Spiegelman countered that the only way he could address this story was through his art.

Ironically in 2022 the book was banned in some schools in Tennessee, USA. Commenting on the event in an interview with MSNBC, Spiegelman likened it to “the burning of books in Germany in the 1930s.”

Edited by: Giorgos Passas