I discovered the book ”Maus” just a couple of years ago when I started getting re-interested in comics and drawing. The kerfuffle over banning it in the Tennessee school has turned it into the number one best-seller on Amazon.
According to Art Spiegelman, the author, one of the book‘s parts deemed objectionable was the frame showing his mother’s death by suicide after she survived Auschwitz. I’ve seen it. I couldn’t even remember it until i saw it again. I’d forgotten all about it. It is a black and white cartoon line drawing, one frame of several on that page. It is about as non-graphic as you could depict a subject like that without depicting it at all.
All I can say to the parents worked up over this book is, if you’ve banned it but you haven’t looked at your kid’s TikTok feed lately, you are just being foolish. Auschwitz IS offensive and that’s the point. It still stands for a reason – so we never forget. The book Maus was written for the same reason and it comes from someone who experienced it. How rare is it to hear a voice like that today? It’s getting exceedingly rare.
World War II is ancient history to most people now. How many people have even met someone who witnessed the death camps? I have. I’ll never forget the day my grandfather talked about the human bodies piled high like stacks of firewood. ‘“I saw that with my own eyes,” he said. And he never talked about it again.
I’m happy that Maus is receiving new and widespread interest. Maybe it’s banning wasn’t such a bad thing after all.