Education about Nazi injustice and the Holocaust has never been more relevant or more urgently needed than it is today, 80 years after the end of the war. But how can history be taught in a way that resonates in the present? Comics and graphic novels bring the past to life through images and words, and they have a strong appeal among younger audiences. Many Education Agenda NS Injustice projects are currently working on or with graphic novels. Here we will take a closer look at two of them.
© Hamed Eshrat
Is it possible to tell the story of the Holocaust in the form of a comic? For a long time, that idea was considered taboo. There was too great a risk that the images might trivialize something that was nearly impossible to put into words. But by now, graphic novels – narrative comics in book form – have been doing more than entertaining for a long time. They have become a recognized part of memory culture and a powerful, accessible tool in educational work.
History is often taught through numbers – millions of victims, dates, decrees, and laws. But what is often lost in the process is the people behind the numbers. Graphic novels can help fill that gap.
© Sanja Prautzsch
That is because they tell history differently. They combine images and text, highlight what is missing, and express emotion without needing to explain it. In Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, arguably the best-known comic about the Holocaust (first published in two volumes in English in 1986 and 1991 with a German translation published in 1989), Art Spiegelman tells his father’s story as a survivor of Auschwitz using animal metaphors: Jews as mice, Nazis as cats.
The book was initially condemned by the German press and met with a confused reaction among the public at large, but it did mark a turning point in Holocaust education. Today, numerous graphic novels about National Socialism are being published, and more and more educational projects are using comics not as supplementary material but as a central pedagogical tool for engaging with history.
The Education Agenda project “ErinnerungsZeit” [MemoryTime] tells fictionalized stories about people persecuted under the Nazi regime in the format of a visual novel. Developed by the Berghof Foundation, the project is specifically directed at young people. On the digital platform and in a companion app, users can explore what they can learn from the solidarity and resistance of groups persecuted under National Socialism about responding to hate and incitement today.
Users follow Ben and his friends in their mission to push back against hatred in their apartment building. As they try to rally the building’s residents as allies, the story turns into a time-travel journey from the Nazi era to the present. The interactive experience features biographically inspired episodes about solidarity, civil courage, and resistance among Sinti and Roma, Jewish people, Black people, and members of the LGBTIQ community.
What makes this project especially noteworthy is that the development of the visual novel was based on a peer-learning approach. University students conducted biographical research and background investigations as part of a seminar. A diverse team of experienced comic artists then drew on this material to shape the characters and storylines.
Graphic novelists who identify with the Jewish, Black, Sinti and Roma, or LGBTIQ communities were directly involved in developing and realizing the project.
Graphic designer Sanja Prautzsch, a member of the LGBTIQ community herself, shared her experience: “It was a great honor and a meaningful, empowering experience for me. When you’re affected yourself and can even relate personally to the protagonists’ experiences to some extent, you’re able to weave personal elements into the story, and that makes their journey more authentic.”
Project director Dagmar Nolden reflected on the range of perspectives that emerge: “Each story stands on its own, just like the colored elements in a kaleidoscope. But it’s only in combination that something like a full picture emerges – each element, each perspective, has its place and is important if we want to speak of multiperspective remembrance.” Remembrance is polyphonic, a process that is never complete but rather stays alive through new perspectives. And the visual novel vividly conveys that.
With ErinnerungsZeit, learning about history becomes a creative process that not only communicates knowledge but also strengthens democratic awareness and action in the present.
Another example of how graphic novels can open up new ways of engaging with Nazi injustice is the publication Ausradiert – Nationalsozialistische Eugenikverbrechen in Thüringen [Erased – National Socialist Eugenics Crimes in Thuringia]. It is the result of the Education Agenda project “Beredtes Schweigen – NS-Eugenikverbrechen und ihre Folgen” [Eloquent Silence: Nazi Eugenics Crimes and Their Consequences] from the research center Lernort Weimar, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and the stellwerk youth theater. This graphic novel sheds light on a topic that remained hidden for far too long: the murder and forced sterilization of people with disabilities and mental illness under the Nazi ideology of “racial hygiene.”
Illustrator Anke Zapf went on a journey of discovery with pencil and eraser, a process of engagement and empathy. Through its powerful visual language characterized by dynamic pencil drawings and deliberate use of erasure, she guides readers close to the life stories of people affected by Nazi eugenics crimes – stories that are too often shrouded in silence to this day.
Zapf works with striking contrasts: pencil lines and traces of erasers, blank spaces, ruptures, and words left unsaid. As a result, the stories of the people affected are not just narrated but also visualized as something that was nearly erased.
The childlike face of Erika Haase looks out at the reader with uncertainty. Born in Weimar in 1936, Erika did notfit with the Nazis’ racist and eugenic image of humanity in several ways: she was the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish sex worker. As a baby, Erika was taken in by a loving foster family, but in 1944 the city authorities took her out of that home in order to prevent her from living alongside her “Aryan” foster sisters. She was placed in a so-called “community home for mixed-race children” – in reality, the Hadamar killing center in the state of Hesse – where she was murdered just 27 days later by a deliberate overdose of medication.
The process of exclusion that led to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people is reflected in the drawings of faces like Erika’s, whose contours and life force slowly fade until only traces of loss remain.
The project also involved reconstructing the lives of Erika Haase and other Weimar residents based on archival material. Anke Zapf’s graphic novel draws on that research and provides a face for the victims, whose information comes, in most cases, only from the records of the perpetrators.
They are not a substitute for visiting memorial sites or engaging in fact-based learning, but they are a powerful tool for keeping history alive.
That is because it sometimes takes images to ensure something is not forgotten. That and people who look closely.
Explore the visual novel ErinnerungsZeit.
View the graphic novel Ausradiert.
Author: Sophie Ziegler, EVZ Foundation
