Superman is Jewish? The intersection of history, religion, and popular culture in comics

I have blogged previously about Art Spiegelman’s Maus.  The books were an eye opener for me, seeing the powerful emotions, a storyline that personalizes history while not minimizing it, and a format that invites in reluctant readers.  Graphic novels (books in comic book format, with illustrations, and often dealing with topics that align more with adult themes) are a great entry point for both strong readers and reluctant readers.  The art form of comics allows two media to be conjoined and to deepen the experience of the audience.  Comic books have traditionally been in the realm of pre-teen and teenage boys.  The simplicity of the illustration can fool many in to believing that there is little worth between the covers.  Surprisingly - thankfully - there is so much more going on inside of these books.  Seemingly because of their innocuous nature, they are able to convey adult themes, open doors to history, and deal with current events in a way that can be both profound and easily overlooked at the same time.

 

In 1941, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon created the character Captain America.  On the cover, Cap has infiltrated a Nazi bunker, and is punching Adolf Hitler.  A great image from today’s standard, and nothing less than we would expect from the stories we are taught in our textbooks.  But, the comic came out in March 1941, before the US was committed to the war.  The war was "over there," and Americans wanted nothing to do with it.  Kirby and Simon were young Jewish artists and decided to turn current events into their story.  Their work did not start the war, or increase patriotism.  It took current events and pushed them to the forefront.  It demanded attention and erased ignorance.  It piqued interest and awoke a younger generation.  (Very much in the same vein as Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, today.)

The Holocaust would come up again in popular culture in the 1950s.  Several different stories would deal with the history in different ways.  Stories would continue, ideas would be shared.  And in the 1960s, Stan Lee would create the story of the X-Men, a group of humans that are different, and therefore feared.  I began reading the series in the 1980s, and was immediately drawn to the storyline of exclusion.  While not overtly mentioning antisemitism, it would be hard to deny, even as a boy, the historical basis.  Seeing America’s transformations throughout the 90s - the cultural acceptance of interracial dating, homosexuality, and other minority communities - the X-Men storylines reflected society, and built empathy. 

At some point, I stumbled upon the graphic novel, X-Men:  God Loves, Man Kills.  My eyes were opened.  A part of the story deals with violence aimed at those considered different, and therefore, considered unworthy of life by some (an arching theme in the X-Men universe).  Two young children are hung from a swing set.  They are found by the arch-enemy Magneto (created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, both Jews).  This sets up the backstory.  Magneto will become a complex character that several writers will work to flush out.  Ultimately, in Magneto: Testament, published in 2008, we discover that Magneto is raised Jewish in a German home. His family flees the Nazis and are caught in Poland.  Long story short, his past helps shape his views, and quite possibly reflects the nature of the creators. Magneto’s complexity will be reflected in the movie series, but will not be as effective at generating the empathy and complexity of the character.  The films, though, do provide a decent entry in to the comic world. 

Most recently, Disney has paired up with several creators to develop a film and online graphic novel set entitled, “They Spoke Up:  American Voices Against the Holocaust."  This is an interesting series, and I am just breaking in to it as I write this, but looks to be a promising resource.   I will blog about that in the coming weeks.  There are other great works available out there including a great story entitled 2nd Generation: Things I Never Told My Father, in graphic novel form, dealing with the complexity of the Holocaust that allows entry and absorption at multiple levels.  They just aren’t available in the United States. 

As I was researching for this post, I came across a recently published book (2012) entitled Superman is Jewish? that relates similarities in Jewish culture with the comic book storylines.  The author makes a wonderful comparison of the alien that would become Clark Kent being rocketed to safety by his parents before their destruction:  An interstellar “Kindertransport.”  Comic books are much more complex than we can even imagine. 

Sadly, there has been little new in the way of Holocaust graphic literature.  The stories of the 1950s provided shock and awe at a time when it was still fairly new in the cultural psyche.  The Holocaust is rarely invoked as a teaching tool in modern mainstream culture.  It has been moved to the shelf of distant history.  We must be careful to not lose the lessons learned in such a hard fashion.  We must follow the lead of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, use the media of comics and graphic novels to shape the future generations in a less blunt fashion.  Truly, it is often those that need the lesson the most that will be most likely to pick up this form of literature.  Rather than just re-illustrating Anne Frank, let us seek to build on the exploration of humanity by find new avenues and new stories to tell in different formats. 

Teaching about victimization requires context

Tonight, as my seven year old did homework, a commercial came on for the new Jackie Robinson movie, “42”.  Her question to my wife got me thinking:  “Who is Jackie Robinson?”  She has heard of Martin Luther King, many Catholic saints, and the Obamas.  She understands that these are important names and important people, can tell you their roles, and a little from their back story.  I realized, in her question, that she wanted to know his story.  

Here is the clincher:  As we deconstruct racism, the pushback of those with power (what is sometimes referred to a perception of reverse racism/sexism, etc), and expand the lesson out from there, we can turn this into a study of dominant group and how history education is subverted by accident.  Stick with me here:

First of all, with young children, recitation and memorization are a standard and acceptable part of education.  Nuance is not something that young children are capable of at an Elementary level.  To understand that Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player to play professionally in the national leagues is a response that my seven year old can completely memorize.  But, does it help her understand Why they made it a movie?  Is it clear to her the context of the role Jackie Robinson played?  Absolutely not.  

If I raise my children in the dominant (white) culture of the United States with no background of our racial history, without a context for what we are today, then so seeds of our own destruction.  If my children are taught to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., without understand the world he fought so hard to change, then we are left with something simple:  his skin color.  To understand this fully, if I am seven, have no history background, and see a movie preview, and the answer is that this was a black man who played baseball, it shapes me.  If Obama is celebrated as the first black president, and I don’t understand the Civil Rights Movement because I am only a child, then I left with the surface.  We celebrate his election because he is black.  

To build on that, as I grow with this limited understanding, without a proper understanding of the history to fully flesh out our understanding, we are left with a power struggle.  I am a young white child.  Here is a man celebrated for being black.  What?  Don’t worry, when you get older, we’ll fill in the rest of the context.  By the time you are in your junior year, we’ll explain that Jackie Robinson was treated poorly because of his skin color.  But that is ten years down the road.  

Now, if we expand this same concept beyond race, and we look at any group that we hold out as a symbol of victimization who rose above, we run the risk of creating a pushback in education.  We must be careful that we don’t create a sense of victimhood or separateness for groups that are not dominant.  When we teach Holocaust Education, we must not take the victims out of the context.  When we teach, at as early an age as we can, we must be sure to be clear not to separate ourselves from the victims.  We are both human first.  We must give the full context, not just the simple answer.  Genocide happens when a dominant group is able to convince their children that another group is a victim and is a threat to their hegemony.  But, it is never that clear.  Instead, we put it in ways that are more invasive.  “They make poor choices for themselves, and don’t take personal responsibility.”  “They are getting handouts/taking opportunities from us/degrading our culture.”  “If we allow them to continue, they will bring this country/culture/party/etc to its knees.  We must stop them.”  

When we teach historical topics to our youth, we must be sure to keep them in the context of the event.  We must not stop at the easy answer.  We must give a complete response that leads to more difficult questions.  We may not have the answers, and it may not be a comfortable question, but when we are asked “Who is Jackie Robinson”, or “Who is Anne Frank”, we can’t stop with he was a black baseball player, or she was Jew fleeing Hitler.  We must do justice to those who gave their lives, willingly or unwillingly, to change the world. 

Very little time? No problem!

It's amazing how quickly the end of the school year can come once May begins. This past year I taught Advanced Studies World History to 10th graders for the first time. When teaching a new course I find it difficult to stay on a set schedule with the units. While I am using materials created by others who have taught the course I like to adjust things and find or create new lessons. The end result was that I found myself with very little time at the end of the semester to cover World War II and the Holocaust. Originally I had grand plans of spending a few weeks covering these topics. Instead I only had a couple of weeks. I went into scramble mode to think of ways to teach the Holocaust. The Echoes and Reflections curriculum provided the solution. The great part of this curriculum is the ability to use it in small or larger pieces. It includes very short (generally 1-2 minutes long) video clips as well as lesson plans with documents. Here is how I used it.

• As part of our look at the Nazi ideology and antisemitism I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips from Lesson 2 (Part 1) which consisted of survivors discussing life before the war in Germany and examples of antisemitism. 
• As part of the discussion on Nazi propaganda with emphasis on how Jews represented I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 2 (Part 2) in which survivors talk about their experience with Nazi propaganda. 
• When it came to look at the ghettos I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 4 which includes testimony that provides a very thorough look at life in the ghettos. In addition I used the Echoes & Reflections student handouts on "The Ghettos" & "Excerpts from The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak". There are questions that can be used to guide discussion. 
• Finally, in studying Liberation I used Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 8 which covers the topics of liberation and also the DP camps.

 These weren't the only topics I covered but they were the ones in which the Echoes and Reflections curriculum proved most useful to meet my needs. I won't let this happen next year. The Holocaust will be covered in greater detail over a longer time frame. However I still plan to use the Echoes and Reflections curriculum extensively. It is comforting to know that if I leave myself short on time that I can fall back on the lessons from the curriculum. If you get the chance to attend a training or just purchase the curriculum do it without hesitation. It is thorough in its coverage of the Holocaust but can be easily used in small segments to meet your needs.

Another successful year

In reflecting on the past year, I feel that using the Echoes and Reflections curriculum with my 8^th grade literature students was very successful.  This program is divided into ten lessons.  Each lesson provides a historical context for the topic as well as survivor testimony and primary source material, including photographs, diary entries, poems and historical documents.   It is an excellent resource for material to use in your class.  You certainly do not have to teach all of the units by incorporating the survivor testimony would be a great way to bring the individual aspect of Holocaust study to you students.

My students finished the lessons on studying the Holocaust and antisemitism.  They also studied the history of Nazi Germany leading to the unit on the Final Solution.  This program offers them an opportunity to analyze photographs and propaganda material.  I conclude each unit with a test over the material and an ending project.  

In addition to Echoes and Reflections, my students also read a variety of Holocaust literature.  Within their literature circle groups, they read The Diary of Anne Frank, A Coming Evil, the Boy Who Dared, Behind the Bedroom Wall, Torn Thread, Play to the Angels, Someone Named Eva, Yellow Star, I Have Lived a Thousand Years and All But My Life.

As a class they read Surviving Hitler by Andrea Warren.  This memoir chronicles the experiences of local Holocaust survivor, JackMandelbaum during his adolescent years in World War II Europe.  There is an excellent teaching guide for this memoir on the MCHE web site.

I used Jennifer Jenkin’s lesson on a wall of remembrance quilt with my students as a culminating activity.  This offered them an opportunity to reflect on the material they studied and choose something that personally affected them.  The other students in the school and many parents asked questions about the quilt squares and this lead to discussions about the importance of the study of the Holocaust.

NOTE: The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education will be offering a training, conducted by an educator from Yad Vashem, over the Echoes and Reflections curriculum on July 25, 2012. All participants receive a complimentary copy of the curriculum! Enroll now!

A teachable moment

I am the librarian of the only mostly middle class school in my urban district. My students expressed interest in the Holocaust, and it was near Dr. Seuss’ birthday, so I began with Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, by Richard H. Minear. I have had success using this text with the generational poverty and immigrant students I have worked with in the past, and I was looking forward to working with students who I knew already have a background knowledge of World War II, and who comprehend the larger themes of the works of Dr. Seuss, such as the equal rights message of The Sneetches and Other Stories. We began by discussing Dr. Seuss’ own brushes with antisemitism- he was German, and that was the language spoken in his home. Due to that and that he had a larger nose, many students at his college thought he was Jewish, and he was not accepted by a group (fraternity) that he wanted to join on campus, so he redirected his interests in to the campus paper.

We began by examining Dr. Seuss’s political cartoon on page 58, entitled “The Old Run-Around.” It depicts the struggle minorities had in getting war industry jobs. One label in the cartoon reads” Negro job hunters enter here.” One student, who happens to be African-American, sank in his chair and his expression changed from listening with interest to disbelief. I was thinking through how to approach him regarding his change of expression when he raised his hand. When called on, he asked, “If Dr. Seuss had experienced discrimination, why is he using an awful term for African-Americans?” I was surprised by his question, so I asked him to elaborate. In our discussion, I realized that, since the term “negro” has not been in use for many years, and since it isn’t one of the current preferred terms, he assumed that this was an indication that Theodor Geisel was making a derogatory statement about African-Americans.

Fortunately, my schedule permits me taking advantage of teachable moments! I asked the students to talk to parents, grandparents, and any other older relatives or neighbors about these terms before our next class. Many found connections to those living in the 1940s, and we explored discrimination and terminology. When we were ending our discussion, I asked the student who had the initial question about his view on the use of the word “negro,” and he said he understood- it was the accepted, polite term at that time. He volunteered that he learned a lot about his grandmother that he did not know, and others expressed similar sentiments. Even though the original intention was to explore the cartoons as an opening to Holocaust study, we all felt fortunate to have explored the student’s original impression. An unintended subject, but a valuable experience!

Poland publicly commemorates Holocaust victims

What is a monument? How do we remember? How do we honor? How do we proclaim that these people were once here, and they are no more? They lived, were a part of the rich tapestry that makes up this community, right here, and they are now gone. How do we show that? These are some of the questions that have motivated Polish community members to come together and memorialize victims of the Holocaust as individuals, to declare their personhood, cut short. 

The caption under Adam Galicia’s image of a building featuring sepia-toned, full, window-sized photographs of men, women, and children reads: “Holocaust remembrance advocates plastered images of Polish Jews on buildings in Warsaw that were part of the Jewish ghetto before WWII wiped them out.” Although this caption seems a little curt and almost cold, the image is stunning. With the choice of the word “plastered” as the verb, the sentence suggests an arbitrary thoughtlessness. In contemporary parlance, to “plaster” is to slap-dashedly affix with a cheap adhesive, without much previous thought to placement, or much concern for permanence. It’s a temporary announcement, like a bill board layer. This photo, on the other hand, suggests quite the contrary. It depicts lovely, larger-than-life portraits that have been carefully attached in seemingly “just right” places on the building’s surface. The placement of the photos flows with the structure of the building itself. Some pictures cover the bottom half of windows, suggesting the very power of story itself, behind the shades; evoking a time and place once rich with vitality, dignity, and love. The architecture literally frames the people because of the way the photos have been thoughtfully selected and arranged. And in turn, the people built the structure, not the literal building maybe, but the community itself. The installation of the photographs creates a monument that declares ‘there is a plan here.’ The end result creates a kind of beauty that is at once tender, dear, and chilling.

Most of the original photographs, which are reproduced and attached to the building, were taken in studios, by professional photographers, to record someone at his or her “best.” The photographers were paid to create likenesses that would last as reminders of how someone looked at a particular age, in a particular outfit, or at a specific event like a wedding. The act of committing these loved ones to film declares that each and every individual mattered; was loved, valued, and cared for; and the photographs themselves would likely have been treasured. Perhaps they were framed, hung on walls; or maybe printed from negatives on to paper and positioned in intimate, hand-held, icon-like keepsakes, small hand-tooled leather folios where they could be opened, closed, gazed upon and tucked away for safe keeping. Maybe they were collected in scrap books. Maybe they were taken at school, or after some significant ceremony. These are not candids of people in the middle of an activity, unaware of the camera. They are posed, the subjects are looking the photographer in the eye. They are precious. And now, they have been enlarged, reproduced and lifted up, quite literally some of them, several stories, to monumentalize. They look us in the eye and, by virtue of where they are positioned, within what was the ghetto, they ask – Why?

Asking some of the same questions, Zuzanna Radzik represents an increasing number of Poles who believe that Jewish heritage is an integral part of the history of Poland, and must be taught as well as preserved. She wants her fellow citizens to know that killing during the Holocaust was not limited to places with names so many people are familiar with: Auschwitz and Treblinka. She wants people to remember that, in small communities like Stoczek Wegrowski, where 188 Jews were murdered on September 22, 1942, during Yom Kippur; vital community members perished. As supervisor for The School of Dialogue, sponsored by The Forum for Dialogue Among Nations, a Polish non-profit organization, Ms. Radzik is hoping to also combat antisemitism by creating a better-informed citizenry. Her group sends out educators; through schools in the villages, cities, and towns in Poland, to give students an idea of where Jews lived, worked, and worshiped before their numbers were reduced to less than one half one per cent of what they were before the war. Radzik hopes to make history real, and literally “bring it home” to places where today, the community members have never met a Jew or seen a synagogue. “When we show them where the ghetto was in their town and that Jews were killed there, it all becomes real.” Radzik reminds us. Her organization highlights shared religious traditions and teaches about Jewish holidays and their connections to other calendars.

On the sight of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of April, 1943, in the neighborhood of Murnaow, murals have been painted by Adam Walas. They are in the entryway of an apartment and feature prominent Jews who lived there before the war. Ludwik Zamenhof is one of them. He created Esperanto, the common language that he’d hoped would unite peoples of many cultures. One of the neighborhood’s residents, Beata Chomatowska, has designed an education project involving thirty other local individuals who are also interested in educating citizens about the district’s past.

Zbigniew Nizinski rides his bike through small villages and towns in eastern Poland to talk to elderly people who remember where Jews were buried. He is a 52-year-old Baptist who then places memorial stones on graves that have not been marked, just so that murdered individuals can be remembered. Radzik, Chomatowska, and Zbigniew all hope to help people continue to remember what made the places in Poland sacred – the people who lived there – the citizens who were individuals, who inspired, who worked, who created community and whose memory must be preserved.

Beyond the Pale - Teaching about antisemitism

I teach World History. Each year I teach the Holocaust in the spring. Each spring students ask the same question: “Why did people start disliking Jews all of a sudden?” For many of my students they don’t know much about Jewish history except for the Holocaust and what they might learn about Jews from the time of the death of Jesus in Church.

I start each fall in World History teaching about the Middle Ages. We cover the basics including the plague. A couple of years ago we watched a video in class about the plague and it mentioned how Jews were often blamed for the plague (accused of poisoning water supplies) and massacred by Christians. My students were shocked and could not understand why the Christians would act in such a way.

I found a website that focused on the history of Judaism. It is called “Beyond the Pale: The History of Jews in Russia.”

Inside this exhibit there is a section called The Middle Ages. There are many images that will prompt discussions and also straight, to the point text that is easy to comprehend. Topics include the First Crusades, Anti-Jewish Myths, Patterns of Discrimination, Usury, The Jewish Community, and Expulsion and the Black Death.

In the past I have had students work their way through the website independently and then we will discuss many of the imagines and issues in class. I have attached a worksheet that I have used with students before.

I feel that to better understand the Holocaust students really need a better understanding of Jewish history in Europe. I like this website because it already addresses many of the issues talked about during most Middle Ages units so it isn’t hard to integrate it into the curriculum.It gives students a greater understanding and background knowledge when studying the Holocaust.

Dr. Seuss, Hitler and Human Rights

Many teachers celebrate Dr. Seuss during the week surrounding his birthday- March 2. I am an inner city school librarian working with mostly minority students. Due to my students’ poor test scores regarding nonfiction, I pledged to spend this school year on nonfiction. My middle school students shared with me their excitement about the upcoming Dr. Seuss birthday celebrations. As a librarian, it’s imperative that I collaborate with teachers in order to support what is happening in the classroom, yet I did not want to lose our momentum studying nonfiction. I work to have Holocaust studies a major part of what we learn. How do I celebrate Dr. Seuss, continue our nonfiction studies, and incorporate the Holocaust into one unit?

Fortunately, a year ago, a Cadre colleague, Cathy, shared a great text with me- Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, by Richard H. Minear. I created a lesson plan about political cartoons for high school juniors and seniors. But, middle school?

I began by guiding a student discussion making text-to-text connections with the works of Dr. Seuss that the students are familiar with. I guided the students to seeing the larger themes of his works, such as the equal rights message of The Sneetches and Other Stories. A couple of students were aware of the larger themes for his books, and they enjoyed sharing their knowledge with others. I also shared with them Dr. Seuss’ own brushes with antisemitism. He was German. Due to that and that he had a larger nose, many students at his college thought he was Jewish, and he was not accepted by a group (fraternity) that he wanted to join on campus, so he redirected his interests in to the campus paper.


I asked them what issues were important to Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss). The students were impressed that he was addressing equal rights well before the 1960s. We examined his cartoon of a man sitting at an organ while another man watching tells him he has to use the black keys, too. We then moved to the pressing issues of the late 1930s- isolationism and Hitler’s growing power. Students chose one of his political cartoons addressing Hitler/ antisemitism, and wrote a reflection on the cartoon.

The most gratifying comment made in the post discussion was that one can impact many. I was thrilled; teaching our students to want to make a difference is my mission.