Jewish Cultural Production and Commodifying the Holocaust (Excerpt) Jaz Dow

Those of us with an intimate knowledge of comics may be familiar with Will Eisner’s work, including A Contract with God, but it’s unlikely that the average casual comics enjoyer would be. If you were to ask someone with common comics knowledge to name a Jewish graphic novel, they would almost certainly name Maus and possibly Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation by Ari Folman and David Polonsky. The only difference between Maus, Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation and the books listed in the previous paragraphs is the fact that they revolve around the Holocaust, because outrage sells. Reminding people of the Holocaust has always been an easy way to inspire instant public outrage, and for good reason, but to try to appeal to this public outrage as a form of marketing arguably does far more harm to the Jewish community than good. When the general public begins to rely on a commodified version of history, by creating a sort of ‘myth’ around genocide, their view becomes increasingly peripheral- not direct. 

But the Holocaust is taught in our schools, it sits on our bookshelves and plays on our televisions, surely there must be a reason. I feel that it’s important to state that as the author of this essay, I do believe that Holocaust media is usually, if not always, created and sold with the best of intentions. Intentions like education and awareness. It’s an incredibly significant historical event, and it undeniably changed the world and the course of human history forever. As a society it’s irresponsible of us to let ourselves forget about events like the Holocaust, periods of mass death and suffering at the hands of other humans, for a multitude of reasons. The wake of the Holocaust left people with a renewed motivation to foster spaces of inclusivity, and if we let ourselves forget, what happens to those spaces? Furthermore, it’s human instinct to mourn, and when there is such a devastating loss of human life, we are compelled to keep them in memory. Do we lose our empathy, ourselves when we no longer keep tragedies at the forefront of our minds? Lastly there are two points that go hand-in-hand; questioning our current oppressive

systems and studying history so that we don’t repeat it. How are we supposed to recognize the signs of hateful demagogues rising to power if we don’t learn how it happened in the past? These are more than ‘counter arguments’, these are factual statements. If we let ourselves forget about the Holocaust, we risk a severe backslide in the progress the whole world has made surrounding their view of Jewish people. But how beneficial is the current global opinion of Jews, really? Antisemitism is still rampant, and in the last few years Holocaust denial has grabbed the rapt attention of the public and the media. We should never forget the Holocaust. We should never forget any genocide or mass causality event; we need to mourn the loss of human life. But the average person can’t claim to truly know Jewish culture or life through their Holocaust education. We become reduced to one of the most devastating statistics of all time, nothing more than a group shackled by our own genetics. The way we’ve gone about educating children, and adults for that matter, about the Holocaust has not humanized Jewish people. In fact, one could even say it has done the opposite. 

 So, to answer the question posed by the title of this essay; remembrance is necessary, capitalization is not. The Holocaust is one of the greatest tragedies in human history, and it will not be soon forgotten. Even eighty years after its ended, when nearly every survivor has passed, it still feels like a massive looming shadow over every contemporary Jew. When people look at me, at my family, they see a culture steeped in unimaginable pain and suffering. The Exodus, then the Crusades after that, the Black Death Persecutions, the Spanish Inquisition, the Exile of Mawza, the Holocaust, and on and on and on. But if there’s anything I’ve learned in all my time on this Earth as both a Jew and a human, it’s that I- we– are not our pain. We are not our pasts. And mythologizing and monetizing the cycle of pain and suffering that Jews have faced, even with the best of intentions, only perpetuates the myth that Judaism is pain, which it isn’t. Judaism is family, joy, community, and resilience. And only through expanding our scope of Jewish stories and media can gentiles truly start to see us as equal members of our society.