US Holocaust Museum Reacts to School Board Banning Pulitzer-Winning Graphic Novel

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reacts to and condemns a Tennessee school board for removing Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-winning Maus from curricula.

The day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reacted to the McMinn County Board of Education’s decision to ban Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus from its curriculum.

Following a flurry of online reactions to the Tennessee school board’s “removal” of Maus, the Holocaust Memorial Museum tweeted the following statement: “Maus has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors. On the eve of International #HolocaustRemembranceDay, it is more important than ever for students to learn this history. Teaching about the Holocaust using books like Maus can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today.” The Holocaust Memorial Museum concluded its post with a link to resources for teaching the Holocaust to students.

Spiegelman’s seminal comic tells the true story of his parents surviving Nazi concentration camps, and explores the lifelong trauma and guilt of survivors by depicting the suicide of Spiegelman’s mother and Spiegelman’s painful interviews with his father decades later. Maus is widely known for postmodern illustrations depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, but Spiegelman was awarded the Pulitzer for an unflinching look at the immediate and lasting horrors of a genocide that murdered millions and left deep multi-generational psychological scars.

The McMinn County Board of Education denies that the unanimous decision to remove Maus from its curriculum has anything to do with Holocaust denial or book banning, instead claiming that the novel’s depictions of nudity, profanity and violence are inappropriate for young readers. “We don’t need to enable or somewhat promote [Maus] stuff,” said school board member Tony Allman, as recorded in school board meeting minutes. “It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids. Why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy.”

News of the decision has been met with online outrage as teachers, parents, and authors praise the cultural importance of Maus. Many former students have shared stories of the work being their first introduction to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and others have pledged to circumvent the ban. Spiegelman himself spoke to CNBC about the decision, calling the school board “Orwellian” for its vote.

A statement from the McMinn County Board of Education defending the decision reads, in part, “The atrocities of the Holocaust were shameful beyond description, and we all have an obligation to ensure that younger generations learn of its horrors to ensure that such an event is never repeated.” The Tennessee school board did not, however, offer a roadmap or theory as to how younger generations can learn about such an event without actually seeing depictions of its horrors.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum supports curricula for children as young as middle school, stating on its website, “Students in grades six and above demonstrate the ability to empathize with individual eyewitness accounts and to attempt to understand the complexities of Holocaust history, including the scope and scale of the events.”

Source: Twitter

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