Tag Archives: holocaust

Auschwitz Awareness

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It’s estimated that 1.3 million people entered the death camp known as Auschwitz, of which 1.1 million of them died.  The survivors were forced to cover up the crime by cremating the bodies of those who passed before them.

Two comic books are in the works to educate individuals about this grisly episode in history.  The books, published by K&L Press, are the brainchild of Jacek Lech and Beata Klos, both former employees in the education department and the publications department of the concentration camp museum.

The first two entries are entitled “Episodes from Auschwitz” series: “Love in the Shadow of Death” and “Witold’s Report.”  The books are about individuals who were imprisoned in Auschwitz and their subsequent fates.  There are other books being worked on and 6 others currently in the planning stages.

“Love in the Shadow of Death” is the story of Polish prisoner Edward Galinkski and a Belgium Jewish woman Mala Zimetbaum.

“Witold’s Report” tells the story not only of the abuse suffered by the Polish people under German rule, but of what happened to people like Polish patriot Witold Pilecki under communist rule in the years after the war.

Suggested for those 14 and over the purpose of the books is to open the history of World War II, Auschwitz and the Holocaust to a new generation who prefer not to read traditional history books.

The publishers have purposely tagged the publications as comic books rather than graphic novels.

“The reason we wanted to stay away from (the term) graphic novel is because novel seems to be fiction,” David Kennedy explained.  Kennedy is acting as both a translator for the series and project manager for the books.  “It’s the semantics of the word. This is more of a graphic history book.”

Dina Babbitt

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Received through Facebook from Karin Babbitt:

Today, July 29, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Dina Gottliebova Babbitt was liberated from Auschwitz.

Dina’s story

Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt was a Holocaust survivor.  She was imprisoned in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the Holocaust, where she drew portraits of gypsy inmates for Josef Mengele.

Following the liberation of the camp and the end of the war she emigrated to the US and became an animator. As of now, seven watercolor portraits survive, all located in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.  She has been fighting the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for the return of her paintings.

In 1944, while in Auschwitz Concentration Camp, she was chosen by Josef Mengele to draw portraits of gypsy inmates. Mengele wished to capture the gypsies’ skin coloration better than he could do it with camera and film at that time. Once the portraits were complete, the gypsies were sent to their deaths.

Seven of her portraits of inmate gypsies were discovered after World War II outside the Auschwitz camp in the early 1970s and sold to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum by people who apparently did not know that Dina was still alive and living in California. The Museum asked Babbitt to make the painful trip to the Auschwitz site in 1973 to identify her work. After she did so, she was informed that the Museum would not allow her to take her paintings home. This refusal to return her work to her was a re-incarceration as a spiritual hostage of the Auschwitz death camp.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum claims that because it purchased the paintings from third parties, it does not have to return Babbitt’s works, rejecting her claims and requests to return the paintings. Dina felt that true spiritual liberation would not come until the portraits were returned to her.

Both the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate have passed resolutions in support of Dina Babbitt.

In collaboration with Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, comic book industry legend Neal Adams has championed Babbitt’s efforts. Using text from Medoff, Adams illustrated a six-page graphic documentary about Babbitt that was inked by Joe Kubert and contains an introduction by Stan Lee. A reprint of the graphic documentary and an account of Babbitt’s plight were included in the final issue of the comic X-Men: Magneto Testament.

Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt was diagnosed with an aggressive form of abdominal cancer.  Over the past few days her condition deteriorated and on July 29 at 2:15 pm she passed away.  She did not live to see her paintings liberated.

You can learn more about Dina Babbitt at http://www.dinababbitt.com/

Choice Quotes

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Big Hero Six #1

In the history of the world, only one nation has ever suffered a direct nuclear attack — the island monarchy of Japan.  The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War 2 inflicted scars on the national memory that last to this day.  Like any nation, Japan needs to defend itself, but unlike the other great powers, it has forsworn the use of nuclear weapons.  They’ve found another way.

Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers #3

Some gender politics:

Leave my fiancee alone.  Do you hear me?!  And I am not a tramp you chauvinistic $*@!!

And, is this an Obama reference?

To not believe in you, the savior, the uniter… is to not believe in hope.  I choose to believe in hope.

Ex-Machina #38

The Great Machine – Effective immediately, I am retiring from volunteer community crimefighting.  And running as your independent candidate for Mayor of the great city of New York.  I’m hoping to be part of a truly grassroots campaign, one that will finally utilize the internet’s true potential to reach all voters.  Starting today, contributions as small as one dollar can be made directly to my new website at http://www.hundred4mayor.net.  That’s the word hundred and the number four, so please don’t–

And on speaking to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City:

Deputy Mayor – You’ve officially lost your mind.  You’re really going to deliver a speech from the same stage where the worst President in my lifetime is about to ask this country to give him another shot?

Mayor Hundred – I’m just being a good host, Dave.  Now which one of my stupid old “trophies” do you think I should present to the Vice President tomorrow?

Deputy Mayor – You’re letting Cheney inside Gracie Mansion?

Mayor Hundred – Believe it or not, New York doesn’t belong to the Democrats.

Deputy Mayor – And 9/11 doesn’t belong to the Republicans, no matter what the out-of-towners they’re busing into Madison Square Garden think.  Are you at least going to tell these people to start allocating more antiterrorism funds to the cities that actually need it?

And on Mayor Hundred running for Governor:

Deputy Mayor – You mean… you’re thinking about running for Governor?  Because, no offense, once that seat opens, everyone knows it’s going to Spitzer, unless somebody catches Mr. Clean in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.

X-Men: Magneto Testament #1

From the writer Greg Pak

In the three years editor Warren Simons and I have been developing “Magneto: Testament,” we’ve struggled with the complicated, rich, and contradictory information the comics give us about Magneto’s life during the Nazi rise to power and World War II.  Different comics give different accounts of Magneto’s name, his age, his ethnicity and religion, his hair color, and even his Auschwitz tattoo number.  But as dedicated Magneto fans have documented, the most compelling and essential material indicates that Magneto was a Jewish boy in Europe during the Nazi ascendancy and provides several key details about the fate of his family and his experiences in Auschwitz.

We’ve done our best to remain true to these elements while fleshing out the rest of our hero’s experiences based on research into the actual historical record.  Longtime readers will notice a wealth of surprising new details — for example, for the firs time, we’re revealing Magneto’s birth name.  And sometimes, because the comics record is contradictory or conflicts with historical fact, we’ve had to choose one detail over another.  But at every step, we’ve done our best to remain true to the key moments that have contributed so much towards making Magneto the deeply compelling character we know today.

But most importantly, in an age in which Holocaust deniers still spread their lies, we’ve done our best to ensure that the real-world history we explore in the series is entirely accurate and that we deal with this unfathomably harrowing material in a way that’s honest, unflinching, human, and humane.  In later issues, we’ll provide citations and suggestions for future reading.  For now, we offer a thousand thanks to Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for his expert advice and historical fact-checking.

Comics bringing Israel and Poland Together

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A couple of weeks ago the Jerusalem Post published an article covering a joint comic produced by Israeli and Polish artists.  2008-2009 is Israel-Poland year, and in commemoration of the event 5 Israeli comic artists joined 5 Polish artists to cover issues often thought taboo between the two cultures.

The comic book, Poliisra, has been used as an opportunity to to explore stereotypes between the two societies as well as addressing historical issues between the two countries.  Topics include the Holocaust, antisemitism, and stereotyped views between the various peoples.

An exhibition of the work can be seen starting August 7 at the Israeli Cartoon Museum in Holon.  You can find out more information at www.cartoonmuseum.org.

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