I really dig Dave Sim’s work, which is to say that I dig Cerebus. I’ve ploughed my way through most of the Cerebus trades (this is them on my shelf) and I’ve been wanting to see what he would come up with next, as the only other work of his that I’ve read was that issue of Spawn he wrote back in the day. And now he’s emerged from his hiatus with two projects. Glamourpuss is sitting here on a pile of comics that I need to batter through, but I decided to go for Judenhass first.
Judenhass means “Hatred of Jews” and the book opens with what I find to be a strange conceit, namely that every creative person should consider doing a work about the Holocaust. Sim came to this conclusion following the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschitz, in 2005. Was he not aware of the Holocaust before that point? Was there something about that anniversary that particularly provoked his need to write a comic about it? And why is it specifically the Holocaust that creators need to write about? Why not the dropping of the atomic bombs? What about the 20 million Russians that died in the Second World War? Are there any other historical tragedies deserving of a comic?
He seems to be saying that since many of the pioneers in the comic book industry were Jewish, it’s therefore the duty of comic creators to approach the Holocaust. It’s a tenuous logic, to me at least. Sim continues to open the book with seven pages where he talks directly to the reader. His artwork moves slowly from the train tracks outside a concentration camp towards the gates that so many went through, never to return from, while telling us that the Holocaust was not some one-in-a-million happenstance and Nazi Germany wasn’t the only regime it could have happened under. He’s saying that the Holocaust was unthinkable, yet inevitable.
From there on the book’s artwork is harrowing and moving, as he depicts the horrors of the concentration camps in his photo-realistic style. The problem I have is with the text. It’s basically a bunch of quotes lifted from throughout history about people hating Jews. This includes words from Nazis like Hitler, Goring and Himmler. However, there’s nothing too revelatory in the fact that Hitler had it in for the Jews. There’s also quotes from, among others, Mark Twain, Voltaire, Martin Luther, HG Wells, a line from the founding charter of Hamas and some unattributed Russian proverb.
What all the quotes lack though is context. There’s a line from Winston Churchill in 1937 where he says: “We seem to be moving toward some hideous catastrophe.” That’s it. I dn’t think there’s anything especially prescient about that, I don’t believe Churchill could envision the Holocaust back then. I believe he was acutely aware of the war clouds gathering over Europe, but that’s all. Putting the quote next to an image of skeletal bodies piled high is ingenuous. That’s not what Churchill was talking about.
In one of the most uncomfortable images in the book Sim shows medics cutting open a concentration camp prisoner alongside the statistic that physicians joined the Nazi Party at a higher rate than any other profession in Germany. It seems to me the implication is every doctor signed up in order to perform experiments on Jews, which is surely a huge over-simplification of the facts. A twisting of the facts, even.
For someone who has often bemoaned the fact that his own words are taken out of context, I find it incredibly hypocritical that he would present so many quotes from other people out of context. And I don’t see how a ragtag collection of quotes from disparate sources throughout history (including, bizarrely, Marlon Brando) proves that the Holocaust was inevitable. Nothing is made of the millions who gave their lives to defeat Nazi Germany, putting an end to the Holocaust.
Randomly, the last page of the book even throws in a line from a previously-unheard-of Soth Korean comic book artist called Rhei Won-Bok who says: “The Jews are an invisible force that controls the US.” The significance of this is lost on me, but immediately the book then veers off on a hopeful tone, concluding with Lao-tzu’s: “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
Judenhaas is an odd book. Of course every decent-minded person can agree that the Holocaust was abhorrent and should never be forgotten. Sim’s premise that the Holocaust was inevitable seems simplistic, as does the way he collects a disparate hodge-podge of quotes to back it all up.
“He seems to be saying that since many of the pioneers in the comic book industry were Jewish, it’s therefore the duty of comic creators to approach the Holocaust.”
No, the citing of the Jewish comic creators was to put the human face of Jews to us in the form of people the audience (a comic book reading audience, Sim presumes) already respect, or at least whose work we respect. To keep that in mind rather than the more anonymous, abstract people who were the vicitms of the Holocaust. To say that it could have just have easily been them.
“For someone who has often bemoaned the fact that his own words are taken out of context, I find it incredibly hypocritical that he would present so many quotes from other people out of context.”
Are those quotes out of context? Did Sim twist the words of these people that Jewish people weren’t being looked down on? In reading the end notes it sounded like me that he went through the source materials to make sure he wasn’t unfairly characterizing the quotes, throwing some out.
“And I don’t see how a ragtag collection of quotes from disparate sources throughout history proves that the Holocaust was inevitable”
The point was that the hatred of the Jews permeated world culture (or at least the western world) that some such tradgedy like the Holocaust, if not the Holocaust itself, was inevitable. In fact such genocidal slaughters of Jews did have prior precident, as was cited in Judenhass.
The point is that such barbarism does not spring forth from history cold. The widespread hatred for Jews and the intellectual arguments that went largely unchallenged for centuries justifying it made the Holocaust possible, indeed made it probable (even “inevitable”, as Sim puts it) that such an event would happen. Such arguments weren’t just made by history’s villains, such as Hitler, but by respected individuals, such as Mark Twain, Henry Ford, Martin Luther, and others throughout history.
Such hatred not only fueled the genocide itself, but also the shut off escape routes as shown by the refusal of other nations to accept Jewish refugees.
The ultimate point is that just saying “never again” is not enough. You need to see the root cause of the Holocaust as the hatred, and its rationalizations, and confront it in the present.
There’s a lot of excuses still made for Jew hatred today, even by respectable people. (Just read the tail end of Will Eisner’s “The Plot”)
To help by showing positive examples, Sim gives us Harry Truman and Pope John Paul II, so it’s not all doom an gloom in the book.
None the less Judenhass is not just a history lesson. It’s not a ploy to pull at the heartstrings and win awards. It’s a slap across the face, to draw attention to the darker parts of our culture that we can’t afford to ignore, or delude ourselves about how deep they run, otherwise it will happen again.
(I have no idea how the smiley face got into the post above. Obviously my punctuation got misinterpreted. )
One last thing:
“Randomly, the last page of the book even throws in a line from a previously-unheard-of Soth Korean comic book artist called Rhei Won-Bok who says: “The Jews are an invisible force that controls the US.” The significance of this is lost on me,”
The significance is that such hatred still exists today. And Sim is going beyond just indicting history, an easier task, and pointing out one such example in the here and now, in our own sub-culture of comics. A very stark bookend to the opening where the many of the giants of comics culture are Jewish.
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http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=207818&page=176
Cheers for the link Stanley!
“What all the quotes lack though is context. There’s a line from Winston Churchill in 1937 where he says: “We seem to be moving toward some hideous catastrophe.” That’s it. I dn’t think there’s anything especially prescient about that, I don’t believe Churchill could envision the Holocaust back then.”
Firstly, the quotations have context on a number of levels. Many serve to illustrate the major focus that the Shoah was inevitable BECAUSE Jew hate was and still is so pervasive (i.e. citations from Martin Luther, Marlon Brando). Other quotations serve the narrative, such Churchill’s of a “hideous catastrophe.”
Secondly, the difference between 1937 to 1945 is less than a decade in time and in this instance, Churchill was inferring the calamitous policy of German Appeasement would lead to a “hideous catastrophe.”
Moreover, your statement:
“Sim came to this conclusion following the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschitz, in 2005. Was he not aware of the Holocaust before that point? Was there something about that anniversary that particularly provoked his need to write a comic about it? And why is it specifically the Holocaust that creators need to write about? Why not the dropping of the atomic bombs? What about the 20 million Russians that died in the Second World War? Are there any other historical tragedies deserving of a comic?”
is ridiculously callous and stupid. Oh course Dave Sim heard of the Holocaust before 2005. Of course, there are other tragedies less graced with literature (fiction and non-fiction) than the Holocaust.
But your implication that these topics are moving deserving than a piece on the Holocaust is a qualitative comparison based upon your own biases. If you want a study on the Atomic Bombs, read the plethora of books, especially Japanese manga like Barefoot Gen, that explore this topic. Don’t pick up one book and demand that it be another.
For more, check out my review at:
http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/12132875734255.htm
Hi Steven, thanks for dropping by.
I don’t think it was inevitable at all. When Churchill made that comment, with war two years away, the Holocaust was still unthinkable. The futher back you go, with quotes coming from centuries ago, those people never envisioned genocide.
I’m not implying there are other tragedies more deserving of a piece of work. I just find his motivation for doing it unusual.
I read your review, it was interesting. I wouldn’t call Judenhaas a historical essay, and it’s certainly didn’t require enormous research. I think all his quotes are out of context myself, they’re just segments designed to further his own argument.
Anyway, it has people talking and debating, and that’s great.
Someone else is having a pop at me here….
http://www.comicspundit.com/2008/07/judenhass-comic-book-essay-on-holocaust.html
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