In her detailed and captivating graphic memoir, Miriam Katin retells the story of her and her mother’s resilience during their escape on foot from the Nazi invasion of Budapest during the 1940’s.
This striking memoir was discussed in a recent panel hosted in the Gallagher Room of the Newtown campus. On April 9, the college presented: “We Are On Our Own: Holocaust Graphic Narrative Book” Talk, where Dr. Rachel Perry lead the discussion on the representation and memory of the Holocaust and World War II in visual culture, via Zoom.
Perry was the most qualified speaker for this event due to her current teaches at the Weiss-Livnat Graduate program in Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa and in the Holocaust and Human Rights program in Gratz College.
Perry received her doctorate in Art History at Harvard University, specializing in art in France during the Occupation and Reconstruction. Her research straddles the fields of Art History, Visual Culture, and Holocaust Studies while currently working on a manuscript and preparing on an exhibition on the Early Holocaust Graphic Narratives by Women Survivors ranging from 1944-1949.
Accompanying Perry on zoom was Sophie Don, the associate director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, who has worked as a program coordinator, museum advocator and tour guide for many of the city’s cultural institutions with her M.A. from Brown Universities in Public Humanities.
The in-person panel consisted of History Professors Paula Raimondo and poet and visual artist Bernadette Karpa, as well as the Dean of Social and Behavioral Science Samantha Gross who helped create this event.
For those in attendance, a copy of the book was available at the Office of Social and Behavioral Science. The memoir is 122-page comic book – illustrated in mostly black and white sketchy art, taking place in a memory that transformed Miriam Katin’s life forever.
Throughout the discussion, Perry was given the floor to dissect the meaning behind this powerful memoir of testimonies of a young Miriam Katina and to answer any questions about the events unfolded.
Perry began the conversation on the usage of graphic art as a form retelling Holocaust stories by mentioning how It could not have been done without Graphic Novelist, Art Spiegelman paving the way.
“He really defined how comics about the Holocaust could be drawn and written. He became the trend setter with his novel which was written within a 13-year period.” She referred to his Volume 1 Edition “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” where, similar to Katin’s novel, he describes the relationship of a Jewish father and son surviving the brutal conditions of the Holocaust.
Perry believes he set the bar and standard of not only what stories could be told but how they could be told; creating a somewhat revolution in visual story telling especially within the Holocaust.
The topic of visual story telling within the Holocaust cannot be discussed without acknowledging that this type of content originally had an underlying controversy when the original inception of “Maus” was published
“It really rubbed people the wrong way. They felt this form was not appropriate to the context that something as serious and difficult as the Holocaust should not represented in comics,” said Perry.
But after years of fighting for the accuracy in his work, critics classified “Maus” as a memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, and in 1992 it became the first and only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Katin also attributes her work to Spiegelman, stating that artist like herself were “given permission” to tell their story and their memories because of all his perseverance.
After generations of stories continued down family lineages, this form of storytelling has become relevant due to societies way of attempting to grasp the attention of newer audience members. The rise in popularity in this form of storytelling has caught the attention of memorial institutions such as the Auschwitz Museum and Anne Frank’s House which have come up with their own series of graphic novels.
The practice has even sparked a new project at the University of Victoria in Canada where they pair Holocaust survivors with artists so they could create graphic novels of the Holocaust for the next generation, from people with real life testimonies.
This would create a new kind of archive for future readers interested in the topic while we embrace on the awareness of approaching a post witness era without living survivors.
Dissecting stories like “We are On Our Own” and “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” is a way for the Holocaust to reach new audiences of students and community members alike.
Back in 2022, The New York Times published an article on the banning and censoring of the Holocaust in certain school districts. They found that the School Board in Tennessee banned the teaching of Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” due to its “swear words” according to minutes from the meeting.
This particular issue was brought up during the Q&A portion of the discussion, where an audience member asked the panel how they felt about the current climate of concern for high school students not being educated on serious genocidal historical events such as slavery and the Holocaust.
History teacher Paula Raimondo answered with “reading is literacy. Literacy is an act of resilience. If somebody wants to ban books, how can you resist? Just read it anyway. You could assemble a room full of people to talk about it. This goes deep into Holocaust denial and extortion – certainly on many levels. Is it being instrumentalized for political purposes? Yeah absolutely.”
The almost two-hour long discussion followed up with the panelists encouraging the community to stay tuned to newsletters as they tend to orchestrate a history program that takes every semester.
The event, which was supported by a grant from the Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation was brought to campus to not only give the community an in person and online open discussion forum to learn more about Holocaust graphic novels, but also to bring more awareness to Holocaust studies at Bucks.
The Department of Social and Behavioral Science have open enrollment for the Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Certificate Program. HGNS110 History of the Holocaust is an online learning class being held in the 2025 Fall Semester. This class explores the history of Holocaust through multiple perspectives and as an outline for understanding current genocide.
If learning about Katin’s memoir left you wanting more, perhaps HGNS110 is for you. For more information about the “We Are On Our Own: Holocaust Graphic Narrative Book” Talk or about history class registration, contact the Department of Social and Behavioral Science at [email protected]