Representing a holocaust and its continuing impact on successive generations. The future of holocaust memory and jewish identity, memory is connected very specifically to identity. You dont know your past, you dont know your present, and you cant begin to speculate about the future. I want to suggest that there is been a major paradigm shift from the writings of survivors to those of their descendants, their daughters and their sons. So as ellyviccel explains we leave the literature of testimony and that is what the writers are writing, what they gave us and were going to the Second Generation. What do we know about the Second Generation generally . One thing we know, they inherit the trauma, and the Second Generation is both the first and the last. That is to say the last generation that has contact, physical contact with the survivors. Their parents. And they are the first generation, the first generation born after the holocaust and born into freedom. So the first and they are the last. The Second Generation got a very big impetuous from a woman named Helen Epstein. Helen epstein is herself a daughter of survivors in czechoslovakia. In 1979 she published a book called children of the holocaust. Epstein wrote an article about the Second Generation. She sent it to the New York Times and they sent it back saying, what is this . What is this Second Generation. It doesnt exist and it is not important. So much for newspapers. So a little bit later we have children of the holocaust. What did Helen Epstein do in that book . She interviewed people, daughters and sons of survivors, who lived in a variety of places, north america, europe and israel. All of whom connected by their relationship to the holocaust. And all of whom were trying to figure out exactly what that relationship was. They were just tiny portions of the legacy of the holocaust. Because the most important event in their lives happened before they were born. And somehow they knew the secret. For example, here is Helen Epstein. Here is what she says about being a daughter of survives. For years it lay in an iron box buried so deep inside me that i was never sure just what it was. I knew i carried slippery combustible things, more secret than sex, and more dangerous than any shad or ghost. Ghosts had shape and name, what lay inside me was so potent that words crumbled before they could describe. Epstein said further they need to find a way to channel the anger, the sadness, the outrage into some kind of constructive action. And she talks about being obsessed by holocaust imagery. For example, helen used to live in north korea city. Taught journalism at nyu. And she said, frequently on the subway train she used to imagine that as a cattle car going to auschwitz. Moreover, when she would go to concerts at carnegie hall, she would imagine that armed men with machine guns would break in and start killing people. Intergenerational transmission of trauma. Questions about anything . Okay. Lets to the main event. Art spiegelman. How many of you have heard of him before this class . Anybody . Spiegelman was born on february 15th, 1948 in stockholm, sweden. Hes an american cartoonist, editor, comics advocate, based in new york city. Best known for his graphic novel maus. Two volumes, the second and final of which appeared in 1991. Now, spiegelman did Extensive Research before embarking and while embarking during this project. He read survivor accounts, he watches film footage but he said the most important influence on him was art drawn by prisoners in the various concentration and death camp. He poured over this art because obviously that his medium of expression. One initial comment. How do we read graphic novels . What is the difference between a graphic novel and a regular novel . Anybody know . What is the difference . It has imagery. Good. Good, good, good. Graphic novels have images. The images are supposed to be telling us something. Here is maus 1 and maus 2, both graphic novels. Check out the sub title. Maus 1, my father bleeds history. So what is wrong with this title, this subtitle . Hes free but the subtitle, in here my troubles began. Isnt that counter intuitive. After all, auschwitz is behind him. And hes saying here my troubles began. Why would that be . Yeah. The fact that he made it through and many others did not. Well, the attendant issue of survivor guilt and the fact that the trauma continues. For example, unlike Steven Spielbergs shlinders list, when the prisoners and the days of the holocaust you see in black and white and suddenly the war is over and it switches to collar, remember that. As if everything is cool, nothing to worry about. Speaking of trauma, im having a little trouble with this but ill work on it. Okay. So maus appears in 1991. Meta maus is a retrospective look at maus and it was published in 2011. And meta maus is a complete package. It is a book, its got dvds, you could watch speelingmans interview with vladdic. You could hear what he has to say in private reflections. Meta maus is worth looking at if you get a chance. Now, lets get to the big deal here. The genre issue. But what is the genre issue . I think it is comic book is light and the comical and it is the oxy moron of the horror of the holocaust by likeness that is certainly part of it. Let me suggest another part. For spiegelman, comics, c. O. M. I. C. S. , is broken down into comix. A mixture of words. What else is the genre issue here and were going to return to this comics comix issue later. What else is going on. The depiction of the characters as animals. Very good. The depiction of the characters as animals. What animals . Lyons, pigs good. Who is who . Dont forget reindeers, too. Who was who . Who are the main characters . Who are depicted as mice. And germans as cats. Germans as cats. Everybody in the world knows about the relationship between mice and cats. Its not a very good one. It is like woody allen said the lion shall lie down with the lamb but the lamb will have a very restless night. Cats and mice, not so much. They dont get along too well. Okay. Now, there was a major, major discussion, argument about the use of animal figures. But let me say this first, spiegelmans book is the single most influential Second Generation work that we have. It won a Pulitzer Prize and there was a controversy over where this book should be listed on the bestseller list. Should it be fiction or nonfiction . The New York Times at first listed it under the fiction category. Spiegelman objected. Vigorously. And they changed it to the nonfiction category. Because it is nonfiction. It is both as we heard a biography of vladdic and enjick and mala and autobiography of Art Spiegelman. Hes drawing himself into this graphic novel because it is like this. How would you like to be the second set of children born to job, the biblical character. How would that be in the house . I know we have a hollywood ending in the bible but it is extraneous to the story. What would it be like to be a replacement child. As if there could ever be a replacement child. That is the issue here. That is one of the issues that spiegelman confronts. Here the conversation. First the people who say it is a good thing that spiegelman did. Lawrence langer is a distinguished literary critic and he said it is a serious form of literature and sustaining and intensifying the power of the first volume. He reviewed the volume two in the New York Times. Perhaps no holocaust narrative will ever contain the whole experience but Art Spiegelman draws us closer to its bleak heart. Hes saying that the animal forms invite us rather than repel us. What do you think about that . Is that true . In your experience . Its very inviting. I think so. I think so. It is it draws us in and makes us part of the story as well. Anybody else want to it doesnt seem to have the personal connection that it would be if it portrayed humans rather than animals. Interesting. The emotional yeah, yeah. But if it doesnt have a personal connection, what use is it to us as readers . It is representative. Representation. Representation of the continuing impact of the holocaust on the survivor and the survivors off spring. Gloria, did you want to say anything. I felt i could relate more because theyre mice and i felt it would make it easier for everyone to really i think that is not opposite. I think that is agreeing. I think when you start reading it you kind of spark curiosity how the author is going to portray them in a truthful way. So it does draw us into the narrative and certainly the image. Now, jeffrey hartman, a distinguished literary critic, now emeritus at the university, expands the idea of the use of animals. The metaphor fos is is of the human figure recognized that the holocaust has affected how we think about ourselves as a species, the human, question mark, race. What is the difference between humans and animals . Is this how humans operate . Well, evidently yes. So it is a problem of all of the exertations about of the glory and the beauty of humanity. A little lower than the angels. Well quite a bit lower. Terrance de pray said Something Else about maus. Maus is a Family Romance re pleat with guilt and complexity caused by the hold of the past upon the present. The kind of acknowledgment of suffering that could not be dismissed but only shared in the survivors tale before us. So are you persuaded by these three observations . Please say yes. Good. Because now i want to go to the objections. Objections to maus, the most powerful of the objections was stated by hillel hallkin, an american who moved to israel many years ago and is himself a distinguished literary critic. And what does he say about maus . He doesnt like it. He says the following, drawing people as animals is doubly dehumanizing. What does he mean . By virtue of symbolism and graphic limitations. What about symbolism . He says this, havent the nazis already dehumanized the jews enough . Havent they already tortured, beaten, starved and murdered them, dehumanized them. Why do we need animals . One argument. Second argument. Graphic limitation. For halkin, excuse me, animal faces simply are not expressive enough. Human faces are far more expressive. What do you think about this argument . Yep. Doesnt it make it easier i disagree with that because i think that okay. It makes it easier for the average maybe nonjewish person to relate to the comic with animals and interesting. So you break it down between jewish and nonjewish. It is less painful to see less expression on an animals face than to see a humans face suffer so much. That is probably so. So easier for everyone to read. Okay. Good. But is it true . Are animal faces unexpressive . How many people here own a pet aside from a husband or wife . Okay, so, what do you say . Yep, judy. I think the animal faces were more expressive. I got more emotion. I felt more emotion from looking at those mice that were being or whatever than i think i would have by the humans. Well i think animal faces could be quite expressive. I think it does make it more expressive as an example people find faces in pieces of toast or something. And then it becomes a beg deal. So i think as humans we look like it is universal. We look for a face. Everything else is blank. I think certainly that is the argument that professor cheney at Dartmouth University makes. That we look for faces. We can relate to faces. Maybe because of some narcissistic reasons. But we look at faces. We just cant resist that. And the question here is, is the animal face expressive or not expressive . I get the sense of the meeting here that most folks think that the animal face can be quite expressive. As well as the observation that nonjewish people may be able to relate more if its presented in the comix form. I agree with dallel. Good. Because the story were saying, yeah, they are animals like a cute or a sad story but it is like a movie, like hollywood movie. Youre not portraying the real thing and you want to show the reality so it wont happen again. Interesting. So, what can we say . We have arguments on both sides of the issue. Which is good. It means that the holocaust continues to jgenerate conversation, which it should. Continues engage us as it should. And somebody else has a question. Yes, sir. I just want to say that nothing has ever expressed pain and suffering as the faces of the survivors on film, black and white film that was taken upon liberation when the camps were liberated. So youre agreeing with halkins position. Yeah. All right. Any other comments about these two opposed conditions . I think one of the advantages of this form is that it interzeuss the material to an entirely different audience. I think the application of the graphic artistry allows people who are very visual to see the story in a way that they could relate to, that they may not pick up from just having words or just from a film. I think it creates another audience. I think that is a good point. And we might summarize it by saying it universalized the story. People who pick up on graphic cues more than the written word, certainly. Everybody, as i said before, everybody in the world knows about the relationship between mice and cats. And it causes us to reflect on the issues that are raised here. I think that is true. Let me move on. Okay. Some of the psychological issues that we find in maus, and indeed in the entire range of Second Generation literature. The lack of parental boundaries and were going to return to these shortly. The lack of the validation of childrens emotional needs. The role of silence. Children and parents not asking questions because they fear hurting each other when, in fact, what you dont know is frequently a lot more scary than what you did know. Over protectiveness, rage, images of survivors, on the one hand my fathers a hero, he survived the holocaust. On the other hand, good lord, look at the way he dresses. Like a real immigrant. Looks terrible. And besides he talks funny. All of these issues are issues which survivors, their off spring need to confront and they confront them in a variety of ways. Any questions about these points . Which are, in fact, definitive of Second Generation literature. Lack of validation of childrens emotional needs. You dont want to eat your vegetables . I saw my mother starve to death in auschwitz. That is not exactly a comforting image. Lack of parental boundaries. Let me see how i could interfere in your life more. Parents are known for not understanding anything anyway. We all know that. Until we grow up and become parents. But the lack of the willingness or ability to say, okay, you want to go out on a date, fine, go, enjoy yourself. But dont forget if there is flawed parenting and parenting is a difficult enough task in any case, let alone after you survive the holocaust, remember one thing. At the time when the survivors were supposed to be learning parenting skills, they were in auschwitz. Not exactly a good place to learn how to nurture people. Not a good place to learn how to express love, comfort and encouragement. Sure, there is flawed parenting. What else would you expect . Okay. I want to touch briefly on this. This is a holocaust story. But yet what do we know about the role of english . Surprising, at least in two ways. Remember in maus 1 he is called what . Hes called the sheikh. What is a sheikh. Vladdic is called the sheep in volume 1. S. H. E. I. K. What is a sheikh . A nobleman. A nobleman and a ladys man. And how does vladdic meet anja any way . Do you remember in volume 1 . How do they meet. Somebody fixed them up. Yeah, and what language do they speak. Ill give you a clue. English. English. In poland. So they have a relationship based on the fact that both of them speak english. How bizarre. In poland . Okay. What about the second point, english as life saving. How do we know that . Yeah. That was the camp in one one of the camps and he wanted to learn english so he found out that vladdic. Vladdic spoke english and that saved him because he gave him food in exchange for teaching him english. Okay. One way we know english is life saving is that vladdic teaches a capo, a guard, english in return for extra food rations. Literally life saving. English becomes the inadvertent language of holocaust representation. Vladdic speaks english but in a refugee cadence way. You know hes a refugee and not a native speaker. If you want to know more about this issue of english as the language of the holocaust, which strikes one as quite bizarre, i recommend a very good book by allen rosen, called sounds of defiance. Our library has it. Professor rosen raises very interesting points about how suddenly english becomes the language of the holocaust. And, again, all intuitive ways of looking at this. It is counter intuitive. Questions about anything . Okay. Lets move on. Religion. Religion. They say you should never talk about politics or region if you want to have a good time at a party. What do we know about religion in maus . Especially with vladdic . Well he talks a lot about something called parsha. That is a weekly biblical reading. A parsha trama is he is in a prisoner of war camp and he has a dream. What is his dream . The dream is that hes visited like a rabbi and they tell what do you mean like a rabbi. There is no like. It is either rabbi or it isnt. In this case it is not. Who is it . Who is it . His father. Father. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Actually it is not his father, it is his grandfather. Both of us when stay after school. Okay. What do we know about the grandfather any way . He tells him that he will be set free from this camp. Yes. On the day of parsha trama. And we know the grandfather is quite religious and his prediction comes true. Vladdic is freed on the day of the reading of the portion trama. But other important events occur on this day too. Vladdic and anja are married on this day, remember. Art spiegelman is born on this date. Art spiegelman has his bar mitza or rite of passage on this date. So this becomes a important entree into the religious life, although vladdic said Something Interesting about our old friend do you remember this one . What does he say . You know that one. What does he say g. O. D. . What does vladdic say about g. O. D. When hes being interviewed by art . Yep. He wasnt there. Yes. God was not there. Vladdic said in auschwitz, god did not come. We were all on our own, he says. Now you might want to mentally compare that to what e