The Comic Books That Showed Americans the Reality of Nazi Concentration Camps
A time when comics tackled the horrors of the holocaust.
A survey conducted in the spring of 2018 found that almost half of all Americans and nearly two-thirds of Millennials were unaware of the existence of Auschwitz, and many more were ignorant of even the most fundamental facts regarding Nazism and the Holocaust!
But if you were a youngster growing up in the 1960s or 1970s, you may have been exposed to this critical topic for the first time through a comic book. This is because a small group of creators, backed by their publishers, decided to include racism, anti-Semitism, and the systematic slaughter of millions of Jews into mainstream comic book storylines featuring characters like Batman, The X-Men, and Captain America.
For instance, “We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust” (Yoe Books/IDW Publishing) examines that historical context and collects 18 seminal stories from the 1950s through the 1980s. It was written by Holocaust expert Rafael Medoff, comics historian Craig Yoe, and famed comic artist Neal Adams. This book is unusual in that it collects reprints from many companies, including DC, Marvel, and a few others, all inside a single volume.
