We are on our own miriam katin pdf

37

3 The Holocaust Graphic Novel

While Art Spiegelman’s raises many questions about the religious and other dimensions of theMaus Holocaust, more issues remain. The Holocaust (or in Hebrew, the Shoah, which means “catastrophe”) is fraught with unresolvable questions about how this tragedy can or should be remembered in artistic works. Given its enormity, with six million Jews and many, many other people killed in the Nazi concentration camps, can any form of art ever recapture this experience? And should artists even try, or is doing so a type of irreverence toward the dead? These questions have been debated in numerous works, with scholars such as Elie Wiesel and Theodor Adorno stating that it is impossible to deal with the Holocaust in words and images, try as one might; and Bruno Bettelheim and Alvin Rosenfeld countering that silence would give the Nazis a victory. My1

response to this controversy is that the Holocaust is a human experience (in that it did happen and was caused by humans), and that as such it is going to be written and thought about because it is also human to reflect on events, whether positive or, as in this case, horrible. And in fact, as was pointed out during the discussion of , art has indeed been created about the Holocaust in graphic novelMaus format, not to mention film, theater, fiction and nonfiction writing, and painting. The unique contribution of the graphic novel whether it deals with fiction or nonfiction (as in the case of ),Maus is that it offers a reading and viewing experience together. With the graphic novel, one can turn back or forward or linger on a particular panel or page. And unlike during a film or theater production, one can meditate carefully while one is experiencing the work of art, instead of being forced forward every second. As Scott McCloud and Marshall McLuhan before McCloud have pointed out, the leap between panels offers a process of closure or completion, in which the reader/viewer is able to use his own imagination all the time to fill in the gaps. Moreover, like film or theater, the graphic novel offers characters that one can see. In the case of , which remains the most powerful and theMaus deepest reflection on the Holocaust in the graphic novel genre, the characters are animals and the contrast between them, the people they represent, and Disney and other animal cartoons sets up a special resonance. In other graphic novels, the reader can see the human characters, as in a film or the theater, and so the graphic novel combines both reading and viewing, and the advantages of prose texts and visual media, in a special way. The graphic novel therefore offers its own very powerful portrayal of this devastating event, one of whose main themes is the seeming absence of God.

Although occupies a place of its own, especially in terms of religious reflection, andMaus therefore has an entire chapter in this book devoted to it, there are several other very worthy graphic novel Holocaust representations, and I will deal with them in this chapter. Each one is moving, and each one adds something to the accurate knowledge of and reflections about this event. All involve questions of personal identity and belief. Martin Lemelman’s and MiriamMendel’s Daughter Katin’s are both very moving and extremely well-done true memoirs of theWe Are on Our Own Holocaust. Unlike , they use people rather than animals as characters and are completelyMaus straightforward and realistic in their depiction of the characters and events that they describe. But they take opposite positions on the religious issues raised by the Holocaust, with Lemelman’s book testifying to positive supernatural events and Katin denying the existence of a caring God. Because they both are convincing and because, to a certain degree, seeing is believing, these two memoirs, like , are among the most powerful depictions of the Holocaust in any medium. They do notMaus rely upon physical horror but rather on mental horror, which is all the stronger for being visually

Co py ri gh t © 2 01 4. U ni

ve rs it y Al ab am a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/27/2018 2:41 PM via FLORIDA STATE UNIV-MAIN AN: 778109 ; Tabachnick, Stephen E..; The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel Account: s5308004

38

depicted on the faces of the sufferers. Similarly, the graphic portrayal of Anne Frank’s life by Jacobson and Colón is an excellent visual and written rendition based on an extremely powerful written work, Anne’s diary. Because Jacobson and Colón’s work is a biography, in which Anne is often called “Anne,” rather than “I” as she always calls herself in her diary, their work conveys a less intimate tone than her first-person account. Despite this disadvantage, which is true of almost all biographies in comparison with autobiographies, the graphic novel genre adds a visual, diagrammatic element missing from the original textual version of her diary, while the extra life events provided by the Jacobson and Colón biography fill out her story. Most of all, the realistic visual rendering of her appearance and those of her companions and of their condition gives a wonderful concreteness to the people and events described in Anne’s diary. Trina Robbins’s Lily

also tells the true story of a young girl who was caught up in the Holocaust, but with a muchRenée happier ending than Anne Frank experienced: Lily es-capes from Europe and becomes a known comics artist. Joe Kubert’s is an imaginative rendering of the last days of a young artist in theYossel Warsaw Ghetto, based on both imagination and historical fact, while Pascal Croci’s , aAuschwitz powerful fictional work, brings the past and present together. Pak and Di Giandomenico’s X-Men:

, like , is another powerful fictional work recounting a boy’s experience inMagneto Testament Yossel the Warsaw Ghetto and in Auschwitz. Pinkus’s and Morad’s reflections on being Israelis in Germany bring the Holocaust’s reverberations into the present, as Trina Robbins’s and Sharon Rudahl’s adaptation of the Holocaust theme (in their “Zog Nit Keyn Mol” in Arie Kaplan, From

, 200–201) does to broad issues of social justice in their graphic rendition of aKrakow to Krypton Holocaust partisans’ song. Finally, Alan Moore’s use of the Holocaust in shows the widerWatchmen applicability of this event in a work of science fiction. All are powerful Holocaust dramas or make use of Holocaust themes, in the form of the graphic novel, but each has its unique style and attitude toward identity and belief.

Mendel’s Daughter, Martin Lemelman’s memoir of his mother, Gusta, transcribed from a video and told in her own voice, uses a very realistic style of drawing and privileges words as much as text. Instead of using speech balloons, it has separate panels for the words. This is a unique feature of Lemelman’s style, and it gives the book the feel of an illustrated book as well as that of a work of sequential art. One could say that it is midway between both genres. Also, the panels are of differing size on every page; sometimes a face will take a whole page if a momentous event is happening, or someone explodes in anger, and sometimes the pages will have many small panels. These features help focus the reader on the story itself, and particularly on its characters.

The narration is very important here, since the story is entirely a narration by Gusta, with no dialogue between characters except as reported by her. As she narrates the story, Gusta looks like any older American woman, with glasses, a standard haircut, and tasteful but not unusual clothes. Yet her story is anything but the usual one an older American woman might tell. After Lemelman had a dream about his mother after her death, he found a videotape he had made of his mother talking about her life and decided to transform it into a graphic novel. Since he is an illustrator by trade this is a natural choice.

Unlike Spiegelman’s story, which has three narrative lines—the kunstlerroman, which tells the story of Art’s making of the book itself, the bildungsroman, which gives Art’s autobiography as the son of survivors, and the epic, which includes Anja’s and Vladek’s story of survival —this story has2

just one narrative line and (apart from the introduction) is told without any intervention or commentary by the artist. This gives gravity and a solid testimonial feel to the story, which details how Gusta and her two brothers and one sister lived in the woods in a hole in the ground for three years and escaped the Nazis, unlike Spiegelman’s parents, who experienced the concentration camps.

Lemelman’s book has three main themes, which emerge gradually from Gusta’s narration: the religious theme, in which a supernatural agency sometimes functions; the theme of anti-Semitism, in which non-Jewish friends and neighbors turn on Gusta’s family once the Nazis arrive; and the theme of redemption, in which righteous gentiles help the Jews, and even the dead seem to have found some sort of peace.

Like Lemelman’s memoir has a religious dimension to it, this time involving an overtMausC op yr ig ht ©

2 01 4. U ni

ve rs it y Al ab am a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/27/2018 2:41 PM via FLORIDA STATE UNIV-MAIN AN: 778109 ; Tabachnick, Stephen E..; The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel Account: s5308004

39

supernatural agency. In Vladek’s dream about when the Jewish prisoners would be releasedMaus, from the work camp, which comes true, leads the rabbi in the camp, who is also freed, to call Vladek a prophet; and, indeed, this event cannot be explained in rational terms except as an enormous coincidence. In Lemelman, however, the supernatural agency seems to be more tangible than a dream. On the first page, Lemelman himself appears, saying that “I’ve always felt that my mother lived in a world of magic. She always claimed that her father, Menachem Mendel, spoke to her in dreams. And then there was Aunt Yetala. . . . Until the day she died, she spoke of an Angel of God who saved her from the Nazis. Needless to say, I was skeptical” (1). Here Lemelman speaks as a logical professor used to raising questions, and as a secular Jew. But in his artistic capacity both as a writer and an illustrator, he has reported the story as it was told to him, so that it all becomes more believable. At a vital moment, Lemelman shows Yetala’s shoulder being touched by a hand—which the reader assumes is the hand of the angel about which Yetala told Gusta (124). And at the end of the book, when he has each of the dead members of Gusta’s family speak for themselves, a hand is placed over their faces, and this also seems to be the hand of an angel (217). But this is Lemelman’s own artistic device, and is clearly different from the hand that Yetala insists was placed on her shoulder.

Gusta’s account of her sister Yetala’s encounter with the angel (122–24) is reported as Yetala told Gusta about it later. As she was running from the Nazis, an angel called to her and told her to stop running. As a result, she witnessed her father being shot. According to Yetala, the angel tapped her on the shoulder and summoned a woman who took her to shelter. Gusta comments, “Did the Angel really touch her? I am not sure. I only know she was saved” (124). Lemelman shows Yetala looking backward at the hand on her shoulder in the first panel and looking sideways at the angel in the second panel (124), and therefore the reader assumes that it was indeed a supernatural agency, since Yetala seems to have viewed the angel. (The reader however sees only the angel’s hand, fig.

.) Nowhere in does an outside supernatural agency overtly intervene, and yet the events3.1 Maus Vladek recalls about the priest’s prediction and his own dream of being set free from the labor camp seem to indicate divine intervention in his and Anja’s salvation. And as in Yetala has a dreamMaus, in which her father tells her to go with two Christian women who will come to her. And this happens: her brothers pay two women to get Yetala and take her from the cellar, where she is hiding, to them in the forest (137). Lemelman reproduces a page from the prayer book for Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in Hebrew (55), and translates part of it into English; it is the passage about “who will live and who will die,” and how, in the coming year. At the end of the book, Lemelman shows another part of the same prayer book page: “Man’s origin is dust and his end is dust. He spends his life earning bread. He is like a clay vessel, easily broken, like withering grass, a fading flower, a fugitive cloud, a fleeting breeze, scattering dust” (191). And on the last page, he quotes the Passover Haggadah: “In every generation, one must look upon himself, as if he personally came out of Egypt.” Moreover, the chapter containing the “Action” in which the Nazis seized and killed many of the Jews in town, is entitled “Sh’ma Yisrael,” from the prayer that starts “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” In essence, his book shows the miracle of his mother’s salvation, the fragility of life, and the trials that his mother had to undergo, which were not less onerous than slavery in Egypt, and he does so on the basis of Jewish prayers. Clearly Lemelman wants to show a connection between the events and the prayers.

Co py ri gh t © 2 01 4. U ni

ve rs it y Al ab am a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/27/2018 2:41 PM via FLORIDA STATE UNIV-MAIN AN: 778109 ; Tabachnick, Stephen E..; The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel Account: s5308004

40

Part 1 is about Gusta’s life in Germakivka, a town that was sometimes in the Ukraine, and sometimes in Poland, depending upon the political situation. When she lived there, it was in Poland. Gusta speaks with a Yiddish accent, and her English grammar is not perfect. This creates a gap in the narration that the reader must fill in. A theme that emerges early on is the relations between her family and the non-Jews in the town, which appeared at first to be good—everybody used the well in their yard to get water and was allowed to do so. Their family was fairly prosperous, and they would hire as many as twenty non-Jewish women to come pick the fruit in their orchard. Everyone liked to eat the prune butter that the Jews made. The girls had Christian friends, and even wore the local, native clothing that they had been given. They went to school with the non-Jews too. She describes life in the town, which was quite pleasant for the most part. Her sister Jenny had lots of friends, both Christian and Jewish. She describes her studies in the Polish public school and her after-school religious studies. She also tells about the general store they had in her house (41–52).

In school there is one boy who does not like Jews (42), a sign of anti-Semitism under the surface of what are for the most part pleasant Christian-Jewish relations. But when the Nazis come, things become much worse. The Nazis are not only merciless but actually sadistic. They wound Chantze, her relative, and then shoot her to death in front of her mother and father before also shooting them (147). The question is how to explain this and how God could permit it. Lemelman never attempts to answer this question, and perhaps that is the smartest choice, since many other excellent artists and thinkers have found it unanswerable, too. However, Gusta mentions that “the rabbis and the religious say our trouble is from God” (94), as if the Jews are somehow responsible for their fate by having angered God, but no one comments on this assertion.

Yet, via Gusta’s testimony, Lemelman does show why the Ukrainians supported the Nazis. InCo py ri gh t © 2 01 4. U ni

ve rs it y Al ab am a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/27/2018 2:41 PM via FLORIDA STATE UNIV-MAIN AN: 778109 ; Tabachnick, Stephen E..; The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel Account: s5308004

41

Gusta’s words, “And then the Germans come. The Ukrainians are so happy. The Nazis promise them the freedom. No more will Germakivka be for the Poles or for the Communists or for the Jews. Hitler promises the Ukrainians their own nation” (70). But this is a political explanation. It does not explain why the wife of the family’s next-door neighbor tries to steal from them (72). And, as Gusta remarks, “So we started to give away our things to good Christian neighbors, to hold for us. We gave them away with the trust that we will live over the war and we will get them back. But, you know, these people were friendly before, but after . . . These Christians became greedy. They just wanted to keep what we gave to them. . . . They think they will get rid of the Jews and they will be left over the things! They will be rich” (73). So nationalism and greed—very human factors—explain some of it.

But not the cruelty that prevailed. The Nazis come after the Jews, and Yetala’s (and Gusta’s) father runs from them, along with Yetala. But even worse than that, perhaps, is the reaction of the people with whom Gusta has grown up, the people who patronized her store and with whom she went to school: “The Ukrainians watch. Such a good show!” (122). They enjoy seeing the Jews hunted by the Nazis. Moreover, her father lay by the bridge, wounded, the whole day, asking for water and nobody gave him any. Yetala reports that the Ukrainians say that they were afraid to help him, but they were not afraid to steal his shoes. Much later, after the Germans retreat and the Russians come, Gusta and her brothers and Yetala return to their house to find that a Christian family has taken it over. And “the lady is not very happy to see us” (181). They could not get their house back, and they were afraid to stay because, even with the Germans gone, “Ukrainian bandits was still killing Jews” (186).

And from there, the girls went into a displaced persons (DP) camp and the boys were in the Russian army. From both places, they managed to get out and come to the United States. Anti-Semitism is an ever-present theme from the time the aforementioned schoolboy expresses his dislike for Jews, but until it is openly approved by the Nazis, it does not become all-pervasive. And there were also Jewish police who did the Nazis’ bidding in order, they thought, to save themselves. From all this, it seems that when a government agency approves an action, no matter how heinous, people will do it. And some people will do anything to survive, like the Jewish police. But Gusta’s family never did any of these things, according to her testimony. The faces of Yetala, Gusta, and others are drawn very compassionately, and Lemelman’s soft charcoals have the dual effect of softening facial expressions and giving the entire story a dream-like and melancholy feeling, even when its stark reality is very clear. Because of this softness, it is startling and moving when someone shows a fierce emotion. For instance, when Gusta tells her story, regardless of the horrors she relates, her face is kind and objective looking rather than hard and bitter. But suddenly she is shown as a young girl exploding in anger against the Christian family occupying her house after the war, when they blame her for bringing lilacs from what was her own garden to the nun who had helped her during the war years (184). Also, because of Lemelman’s use of photos (as early as page 13) and his drawing of his mother in old age (4, 9), the contrast between how she probably looked (photos are not always accurate, and he must imagine many of her facial expressions that he portrays) as a young girl when these events took place and her older age in America is always there; and the reader wonders how this ostensibly calm, older woman could have endured the loss of her youthful innocence in the sea of hatred that surrounded her. The reader also learns (once again) that he cannot know from exterior appearances what history people harbor inside of themselves.

But the third, much more positive, theme of redemption is also very strong. There were some righteous gentiles who helped Gusta during the war. These were true Christians, and in almost every case they were identified as such—the Catholic nun and the Seventh-day Adventist couple. Because of their faith and good hearts, these people showed humanity when everyone around them was demonstrating the opposite. The nun’s face looks benevolent and her gesture is positive as she touches Yetala’s hand (166). The husband of the Seventh-day Adventist couple was the director of the fields of a rich man. He takes an active role in helping Gusta and her family, even providing them with semilegal paperwork and allowing them to hide in the woods on the rich man’s farm. He also talks another man into sheltering them. Gusta comments, “They are good peoples. They are good Christians” (102). When the Nazi “Action” begins, this man comes and tells Gusta and her brothers about it. He frequently comes to the woods to tell them who was being taken away, and heCo

py ri gh t © 2 01 4. U ni

ve rs it y Al ab am a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/27/2018 2:41 PM via FLORIDA STATE UNIV-MAIN AN: 778109 ; Tabachnick, Stephen E..; The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel Account: s5308004

42

covers up their hiding place with leaves (148). But these were the exceptions, and Gusta unfortunately does not have many such stories of kindness to tell. Her narration calmly comes to a close with a recitation of how she married in the DP camp, how she and her husband got from the DP camp to America, and how her brothers also managed to do that, one after living in Uruguay for two years because America would not let him in at first.

What remains after all this is Gusta’s calling Martin “Mattaleh,” a Yiddishism indicating endearment, and Martin’s pained and thoughtful face at the end of the book and in the photograph on the back cover flap. The reader understands Martin’s quiet anguish as the son of survivors and his inability to believe that divine intervention may have saved his aunt Yetala and perhaps his mother as well. He makes no overt comment about the nature of humanity and whether he regards it as good or evil. What also remains is the Gusta whose spirit shows through her photographs as well as Martin’s sensitive drawings of how she might have appeared in different times and situations at a young age. Her (and Lemelman’s) honesty can be appreciated when she says that her life with Martin’s father, Tovia, was not that easy, and Yetala divorced the man she first married after the war and then married Kalman (210). Lemelman portrays a family marked by suffering and tragedy that continues into the present, which is not spelled out as much as in (even though it is still there).Maus

Lemelman concludes with the thought that in every generation Jews have to remember the passage from slavery in Egypt and to feel that all Jews have gone through it (219), which is indeed what Jews do during Passover and which probably accounts for much of the Jews’ political liberalism. Lemelman leaves open the question of divine intervention. But he gives evidence for it, just as Spiegelman has, and in the even more direct form of the angel’s hand on Yetala’s shoulder. Reading Lemelman’s work, the reader feels that he too has been touched by the family’s tragedy—and even, through the act of reading the book, by an angel—and remembers the good people who helped the family and the possibility of God’s presence even during these terrible events.

Miriam Katin works as a background designer for film companies in the United States and was a graphic artist in the Israeli Defense Forces as a young woman after she and her parents left Hungary in 1956. She came to the United States in 1963. She has illustrated children’s books. Her Holocaust memoir, , unlike and essentially makes her caseWe Are on Our Own Maus Mendel’s Daughter, against belief in God, but at the same time it includes some positive elements. The title gives a clear indication of her point of view. God did not intervene, and as Vladek in says about Auschwitz,Maus there God didn’t come; the prisoners were all on their own facing Nazi barbarity. Perhaps surprisingly, Katin draws in a soft, slightly cartoony style while still retaining a realistic basis. Only a few interspersed pages, set in the present, are in full color; almost all of the other pages are in black and white.

Budapest in 1944, when the story begins, is still an elegant city of culture, and the women, Miriam’s mother and her apparently non-Jewish friend, Eva, are dressed elegantly. But the Nazis are ruling, and the atmosphere from the beginning is horrible, even heartbreaking. Katin writes in her afterword that her only regret is that she “could not give this kind of comfort, a comfort of faith in the ‘existence of God,’ to my children. I was unable to lie.” In an interview with Samantha Baskind, she also confesses to anger “against the faithful.” Although she does not explain that anger, her3

work does explain her lack of belief. She follows in her father’s Socialist and atheist footsteps. And her mother’s story shows that at least as far as Miriam is concerned, if people are made in the image of God, then God must have two faces, one kind and one completely horrible—as in Blake’s poems “The Divine Image” and “A Divine Image.” But unlike Blake she does not ultimately try to explain this duality, only to show it as proof that a good God simply does not exist. She has said that “the atheistic aspect of the book would turn off many Jews—except those ready for an argument”4

because she apparently feels that most Jews are agnostic or believers, but not atheists. Yet she makes it easy to understand her point of view.

Katin’s memoir agrees with Lemelman’s in terms of anti-Semitism. The superintendent of her building, who was once nice and got along fine with Esther, Miriam’s mother, is now hostile, saying “dirty Jews” when her back is turned (13). When he thinks that she has committed suicide, he worries only that he has to make a list of her property for the Nazis. Outwardly, he says that she andC

op yr ig ht ©

2 01 4. U ni

ve rs it y Al ab am a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/27/2018 2:41 PM via FLORIDA STATE UNIV-MAIN AN: 778109 ; Tabachnick, Stephen E..; The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel Account: s5308004

43

her daughter were a nice family but privately he again calls her a dirty Jew (28). On the other hand, Esther’s friend Eva—who seems to be non-Jewish—remains loyal, and the non-Jewish servant girl Anna is willing to work for Miriam’s mother for no pay and cannot understand the hatred driving the Nazis. Anna even gives Esther her St. Anthony’s pendant as a protection and is willing to lie to hide her departure by telling Esther’s made-up story that she committed suicide (23). Anna is obviously religious and hopes that God will forgive her for her lie. Her tears show genuine love of Esther and her daughter.

Despite these good people, it is understandable why Miriam would question God’s existence. In the first chapter, Esther must give up Miriam’s dog, Rexy, to the Nazis, by their command—Jews must give up their dogs. This was just one of the hundreds of small and large ways that Nazis systematically tried to demoralize and dehumanize Jews. Rexy does not want to go, but Esther must bring him in anyway. When the child Miriam comes home and finds Rexy gone, her mother tells her that Rexy died suddenly. Miriam wants to pray to God for his return (10–15). All of this raises the question of God’s existence in just a few pages in the most heartrending manner imaginable. If God allows a child’s dog to be taken away, then where is God? And they must face more trouble: the building superintendent tells Esther that she must move out after making a list of all her goods—another Nazi demand. And her husband is in the Hungarian army, at the front, so she must do all of this alone. Her anguish shows clearly in her face in the drawings (13–14).

Miriam’s mother promises that God will be everywhere helping them as they leave with false papers declaring Miriam a bastard and her mother an unmarried servant (23). Yet one sees no evidence of God’s presence. As Esther moves through a crowd of German soldiers, they address her in sexual terms, and she, playing her new role well, replies saucily (25). Miriam eats a pork sausage offered by a woman on the train, and Esther does not object to this nonkosher food in her new role as a Christian servant. After a German officer, who suspects Esther may be a Jew, forces her to become his mistress, she cries but she has no choice but to continue (43). Esther tells Miriam that God is in the wine barrels (50)—so while wine seems to be godly in that it makes one feel good, this statement also seems to imply that God Himself seems to be hiding from trouble. Miriam in the meantime has adopted another dog that she names Rexy after her first one. Katin clearly does not think that God may indeed be present in all of this: when the second dog befriended by Miriam is found dead—shot by a Russian soldier—the child Miriam understandably starts to think that maybe God is not watching and helping her after all. Yet despite the horrible pain caused the child Miriam by the loss of her two dogs, and though her mother was forced to have sex with a Nazi and to abandon any outward Jewishness, people perceived her mother’s beauty, intelligence, and goodness, and her mother was wise enough to survive, and so she and Miriam got through the war. Someone reading this story might think that there is indeed a God who was watching over them, despite Miriam’s overt views about this as both a character and an artist.

A good-hearted peasant man saves Esther and Miriam, even though his wife objects. Although Esther gives the wife her wedding ring as payment for living with them, the husband returns it to her when she leaves, along with some money (78). And the Russian soldiers she stays with turn out to be good men, in contrast to those who first invaded the village she was staying in who wanted nothing but vodka and women. Also, her friend Eva and the people in the first village in which she stays tell her husband, who is searching for her after leaving the Hungarian army (96–99), where she went and wish him well. Their hearts are good. A Russian soldier even cries as he points Esther’s husband David the way to the train so he can find his wife (105). Yes, there are the Hungarians who say that the Jews are getting by without working, as always, and call them “Christ-killers.” But there are, surprisingly, only a few of them, compared to the many good ones. Yet in the colored pages indicating the present, Miriam wants to prevent her child from going to Hebrew school because she learned from her experience only that God is hiding in a wine bottle (84). As a character, she refuses to see that God may have been in the good people she met—but despite herself, as an artist she is showing those good people and asking questions about her own position, even though she reaffirms that position in the afterword. True, some of these people do not know that she is a Jew—but some, like Esther’s friend Eva, do, and help her nevertheless.

Co py ri gh t © 2 01 4. U ni

ve rs it y Al ab am a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/27/2018 2:41 PM via FLORIDA STATE UNIV-MAIN AN: 778109 ; Tabachnick, Stephen E..; The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel Account: s5308004

44

When Esther and her husband, David, reunite, Esther thanks God and it is David who says, “Esther, God has nothing to do with any of this” (117). He is also the one who says, “We are on our own, Esther. That’s all there is” (118) ( ). Later, Miriam notes that he was always an atheistfig. 3.2 and that she has absorbed his philosophy. But Esther is upset that Miriam has heard this discussion, and Miriam never indicates that Esther ever gave up her belief in God despite her husband’s atheism. In the afterword she notes that her mother “is still living in New York” and “graciously hosting all the Jewish holidays.” So despite her horrible experiences, Esther apparently remains a believer. However, Miriam comments on her feelings as a child when she says “I prayed and I prayed. And Rexy did not come back” (119), so the seeds of her own future disbelief are sown. The last scene in the story (before the afterword) shows her plunging a knife into a doll and asking, “What if mommy burned that God after all,” as she thought her mother did when she burned all of their personal belongings and photos in Budapest (122). But, again, David did come back and the family was reunited. Was it entirely because of their own efforts? Katin the artist leaves this open for the reader to judge, although unlike Lemelman, who as a character in his story cannot decide on this issue of God’s existence, Katin as a person remains unable to believe. However, there is the fact that Esther, who has gone through even worse experiences than Miriam did—such as being forced to sleep with the Nazi officer—and was conscious of them with an adult’s consciousness, never seems to lose her faith in God. As always, the reader must find his or her own position after reading Miriam’s book, whose story is very affecting and whose overt championing of disbelief—despite her mother’s continuing belief—is disturbing.

Anne Frank’s diary, on the other hand, is full of references to God and to prayer. She clearly believed and continued to put her trust in God despite all difficulties. After a particularly scary incident in which burglars break into the warehouse near the annex and the hiders including AnneCo

py ri gh t © 2 01 4. U ni

ve rs it y Al ab am a Pr es s. A ll r ig ht s re se rv ed . Ma y no t be r ep ro du ce d in a ny f or m wi th ou t pe rm is si on f ro m th e pu bl is he r, e xc ep t fa ir u se s pe rm it te d un de r U. S. o r

ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/27/2018 2:41 PM via FLORIDA STATE UNIV-MAIN AN: 778109 ; Tabachnick, Stephen E..; The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel Account: s5308004

45

are almost discovered, Anne writes on April 11, 1944:

God was truly watching over us. . . . We must put our feelings aside; we must be brave and strong, bear discomfort without complaint, do whatever is in our power and trust in God. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews. Who has inflicted this on us? Who has set us apart from all the rest? Who has put us through such suffering? It’s God who has made us the way we are, but it’s also God who will lift us up again. In the eyes of the world, we’re doomed, but if, after all this suffering, there are still Jews left, the Jewish people will be held up as an example. Who knows, maybe our religion will teach the world and all the people in it about goodness, and that’s the reason, the only reason, we have to suffer. . . . God has never deserted our people. Through the ages Jews have had to suffer, but through the ages they’ve gone on living, and the centuries of suffering have only made them stronger. The weak shall fall and the strong shall survive and not be defeated!5

Whether she continued to state this when she was at Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus, cannot be known. But certainly she showed belief and courage during her two years in hiding.