The Shoah, Czech comics and Drda/Mazal’s “The Enormous Disc of the Sun”

ABSTRACT

Appearing fitfully in a handful of works, the theme of the Holocaust remains rare in Czech comics. This essay examines the Czech and Slovak historical responses to the Shoah in the post-war era, through the communist takeover of the country and after 1989 for an understanding of the reluctance of Czech comics artists to explore the topic. Works covered include Jaroslav Rudiš/Jaromir 99’s Alois Nebel (largely considered to have launched the Czech comics boom in 2003) and Adam Drda/Miloš Mazal’s short biographical story “The Enormous Disc of the Sun” (Ohromný Kotouč Slunce), part of a large-scale project from Post Bellum, a Czech non-profit organization committed to preserving oral histories through its “Stories of the twentieth Century” Project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

José Alaniz, Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Comparative Literature (adjunct) at the University of Washington – Seattle, published his first book, Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of Mississippi) in 2010. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Comic Art, the Comics Journal, Ulbandus, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, the Slavic and East European Journal, Comics Forum and Kinokultura, as well as such anthologies as The Ages of Superman: Essays on the Man of Steel in Changing Times (McFarland, 2012), The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov (I.B. Tauris, 2011) and Russian Children’s Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2007). He served as Chair (2011–2017) of the Executive Committee of the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF), the leading comics studies conference in the U.S. His research interests include Death and Dying, Disability Studies, Film Studies, Eco-criticism and Comics Studies. His current projects include Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia and a history of Czech graphic narrative.

Notes

1. For more on how Alois Nebel proved instrumental in launching the post-communist boom in adult-oriented Czech comics, see Foret (2012) and Kuhlman (2009, 63–64). Labyrint Press collected the trilogy into a complete set, with a slightly altered ending, in 2006.

2. For a fuller treatment, see Rothkirchen (2005).

3. The First Czechoslovak Republic was founded under President Tomáš Gerrigue Masaryk in the wake of Austro-Hungary’s collapse in 1918.

4. As Rothkirchen argues: “Given the exigencies of war, ‘the solution of the Czech question’ was a long-range target and, as such, was subordinated to total exploitation of resources” (2005, 141). The Führer’s view of the Slavic people’s racial inferiority and his vision of their territory’s use as Lebensraum would require a number of years to implement.

5. Without minimizing the atrocities committed, we should note that General Alois Eliáš, Prime Minister under the Protectorate, exhibited more enlightened views regarding Jews than leaders in other Reich nations, acting at times to safeguard their interests (see Rothkirchen 2005, 141–145).

6. The account of such a transfer by Terezín inmate Gerty Spies, echoes Nebel’s vision:

Another cloud approaches. Transport! Five thousand able-bodied young men are to be sent away. … The five thousand are divided into two parts, the first and the second transport. I accompany Schwabacher to the so-called sluice by the Hamburg barracks, I help push the cart with the baggage. It was (Here my diary stops. This transport also went to death.). (1997, 144)

7. These figures, promulgated in a Charter 77 publication of 5 April 1989, showed the beginnings of the post-communist era reassessment of the injustices committed against Jews in the country (see Hahn 1994, 61).

8. As documented by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007324.

9. On the Roma’s treatment during the war, see Sniegon (2014), Chapter 5).

10. The Prague tourist sites only hint at the rich history and culture of Jews in the Czech lands (see Kieval 1997). Estimates of Jews living in the country in 1994 ranged from 3500 to 6000, about half in Prague, with perhaps thousands more having some Jewish background (Gruber 1998, 346).

11. Jeffrey Blutinger and other scholars call such responses to the Holocaust a form of “organized forgetting” (Blutinger 2010, 76fn). His own work identifies three post-communist national responses: aphasia; “deflective negationism”; and open examination (Blutinger 2010, 76–77 and passim). Though writing about Central/Eastern Europe as a whole, many of Bluntinger’s points are broadly applicable to the Czech Republic.

12. See Kuhlman (2013) for a detailed examination of another Rudiš and Jaromír 99 comics work dealing with the Sudetenland expulsion. A story in the 2011 We Are Not At War collection (discussed below), Adam Drda and Martin Plško’s “The Massacre at U Zabitého: The Life of Rudy Bělohoubek” (Masakr ‘U Zabitého’: Život Rudy Bělohoubka) also directly addresses this troubling history.

13. Elsewhere he characterizes this view as one which sees in the Holocaust “an external phenomenon that did not concern the Czechs at all” (Sniegon 2014, 202).

14. Other important post-1989 Czech cultural productions addressing the Holocaust include documentaries such as Lukáš Přibyl’s Zapomenuté transporty (Forgotten Transports, 2007–2010); Marek Najbrt’s feature Protektor (Protector, 2009); and Jáchym Topol’s novel Sestra (Sister, 1994).

15. The subject of a 2012 U.S. documentary, The Last Flight of Peter Ginz (directed by Sandy Dickson and Churchill Roberts, U.S.A, 2012), the young artist’s story of resistance and his tragic death (he was gassed at Auschwitz in 1944, at the age of 16) continues to inspire well into the twenty-first century.

16. Publications included anthology series such as Crew (launched 1997) and Aargh! (2000), to smaller fanzines and collections like Short Circuit (Zkrat) and Sweat (Pot). Many classic communist-era works have also been reprinted since 2000, including Karel “Kája” Saudek’s landmark Muriel and the Orange Death (Muriel a oranžová smrt, 1969–70) and Lips Tullian (1972), by Albatros Plus Press.

17. Maus’s Czech publication marked its first translation into a Slavic language (Růžička 2012).

18. Though not immediately, the assessment of Maus among Czech comics scholars seems to some extent retrospective. As Jakub Sedlaček, writing in the journal Labyrint in 1998, noted with classic Czech self-effacement:

[M]aus slipped into our cultural context, compared to the experience of other countries, much more easily, without any shouting or quarrels, and in fact without any discussion which might have aired some interesting things not only about the attention we give to comics in our country, but also about the themes related to the book: the war, the fate of the Jews, racism in general. Maybe this owes to different cultural traditions; with us comics are still under-developed, a marginal phenomenon, and for now basically problem-free, a phenomenon we don’t need to critically consider or deal with in any way  … (1998, 62).

19. See Kulhman (2014, 114) for Jaromír 99’s account of how reading Maus profoundly affected his appreciation of comics and affected his work.

20. Intriguingly, Drda and Mazal here present an English-language sound effect – “Thud! Thud! Thud!” – perhaps to mark the “foreignness” of the violence. Readers of Czech comics, like those of other Central/Eastern European comics traditions, saw the use of sound effects as a primarily “American” device, though by 2011 they had become more normalized even in “serious” comics works. I thank Pavel Koříinek for his insights on this question.

21. Susan Squier makes a similar point: “Comics can show us things that can’t be said, just as they can narrate experiences without relying on words” (2008, 131, emphasis in original).

22. See Alaniz (2012) and Munk (2003).

23. For a more thorough reading of this scene, see Kuhlman (2009, 66–70).