De-Judaizing the Shoah in Polish comic books

Abstract

This article analyses a selection of graphic narratives from Poland spanning the period from the 1940s to the 2000s. First, it shows that while the atrocity was far from being considered "unmentionable" by comic book artists, for much of the Communist period, the Jewish victims were, leading to a peculiar de-Judaization of the Holocaust. Second, it argues that despite the liberalization of memory after 1989 and the ensuing "Jewish turn," which brought about a mass revival of interest in Jewish culture and heritage, this tendency largely persists. Analysing a selection of newspaper cartoons, graphic novellas and educational comic books, not only does this paper show how the genre has been subservient to ideological causes but also how its roles and functions changed throughout decades, from light-hearted stories addressed to a mass readership to educational narratives produced with school children in mind. This paper also shows how the graphic narratives in Poland reflect wider public debates, such as those on the Polish national identity, Christian-Jewish relations and the formation of collective memory.