Polish comic books cover Nazi camps
'We think the history of the death camps isn't sufficiently taught to the younger generations and rarely in a way that would draw their interest,' say creators of comic book depicting episodes of horror and heroism from Auschwitz life
The drawings, at times as raw as the reality, are offset by the humanity of real, historically documented prisoners - and jailers - like the doomed, young lovers in the first adventure, "Love in the Shadow of Death".
The creators Beata Klos and Jacek Lech said they mulled over the idea for years and the format - 40-page, soft-cover comic books - was deliberate.
"We think the history of the death camps isn't sufficiently taught to the younger generations and rarely in a way that would draw their interest," Klos told AFP.
Young people read the comic book about Auschwitz in Warsaw (Photo: AFP)
The illustrations in the series, called "Episodes from Auschwitz", do not spare readers from what their website calls "the nightmarish depravity of Auschwitz".
A proviso recommends the comics not be read by youngsters under 16.
More than one million, mostly European Jews perished in Auschwitz - in the notorious gas chambers or worked to death as slave labourers - during the German Nazi occupation of Poland, and the first book shows piles of naked corpses and sadistic camp guards.
One page has dramatic frames of the heroine on the ground, kicked and beaten with a pole by uniformed guards before being hauled off to a death whose details were never known.
Noble behavior
The book says it's a story that "became legendary in the camp", that of Edward Galinski, nicknamed Edek, a non-Jewish Pole and one of the first prisoners sent to Auschwitz in 1940, and Mala Zimetaum, a Polish Jew arrested in Belgium in 1942.
Mala's knowledge of languages saved her from the gas chambers and got her a "good" job, allowing her to help others.
A third figure, Nazi SS officer Edward Lubusch, an ethnic German who grew up in Poland, helped the couple escape on June 24, 1944, but they were caught 12 days later and executed - she only 26, he 21.
"These three people behaved in such noble manner!" said Auschwitz historian Adam Cyra, who acted as a consultant along with camp survivor Kazimierz Smolen.
"The publishers did well to learn from eye-witnesses who survived," said Smolen in comments on an independent website.
Defiant to the end, Mala slashed her arms and gave her executioner a bloody slap. "Mala did it her own way," the blurb reads.
So did Edek. Standing at the gallows before other prisoners forced to watch, he thrust his own head into the noose and jumped -- shocking the hangmen who forced his body back onto the platform. "At the end Edek surprised them once again," a blurb says, when he shouted something - "perhaps it was 'Long live Poland' or the beginning of our national anthem".
A frame shows prisoners removing their striped caps in respect, further irking angry guards.
"They probably started to regret that it was a public execution," reads a blurb.
Poland rabbi hails work
The work, with a print run of 2,000 copies in each language, was published in May, and has been applauded by both the official Auschwitz museum and Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich.
A second comic, on Polish anti-Nazi resistance fighter Witold Pilecki, is due out in August and a third "most likely" in September, Klos said.
"The entire story is based on completely authentic facts (...) a lot of testimony from former prisoners. This is exactly why we agreed to distribute it," Auschwitz museum director Piotr Cywinski told AFP.
"Seventy percent of our visitors are youngsters" but "it's difficult to get them interested (in Auschwitz) using thick history books," he said.
Rabbi Schudrich, who is American, told AFP "the important thing is it engages young people," noting "this is a problem in an age where often you don't catch young people in the first few seconds in the world of instant everything".
He hailed the work's "educational" message in not only helping teenagers "to understand what the Nazi genocide against the Jews meant" but in showing that the Nazis were also targeting others, including non-Jewish Poles, gypsies and political opponents.
"Many people don't realize that more or less as many non-Jewish Poles were murdered as were Jewish, it's the percentages that were different: it was 90% of Polish Jewry and 10 percent of the general Polish population," the rabbi said.
