No One Wants to Draw the Muselmann? Visual Representations of the Muselmann in Comics

ABSTRACT

This article traces figures of the Muselmann in comics and graphic novels from 1942 to the present. The first observation is that depictions of the Muselmann in comics are rather rare. As in the arts, literature, and theory, they are often metaphorically supplemented by figures like the golem. Especially in comic books before MAUS—A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman (1986, 1991), genre conventions seem to prohibit the explicit mention of Muselmänner. But with the golem-like mud monster the Heap, we identify an early and disturbing reflection of the Muselmann. In action and war comics like ‘7 Doomed Men’ by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Muselmann appears as an atmospheric figure that contours the male heroes by pronouncing dichotomies like weak/strong or active/passive. MAUS eventually establishes a much more nuanced representation of the prisoner societies and the food situation in the concentration camps. Since then, the graphic novel, rather free of strict genre conventions, has enabled other renderings of the Muselmann, visible in publications like Aurélien Ducoudray and Eddy Vaccaro’s Young: Tunis 1911–Auschwitz 1945 or in the series Episodes of Auschwitz. These comics provide a differentiated description of prisoner societies, their modes of functioning and their inherent hierarchies. The article argues that there are different genre conventions at work here. In the early comics, they enable a rather indirect perspective on the Muselmann, while newer approaches refer to more common conventions of Holocaust representation and offer more nuanced depictions.

KEYWORDS:

• Muselmann
• Holocaust representation
• graphic novel
• comics
• golem
• visual history
• popular culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Markus Streb is writing his PhD thesis on the topic of gender in comics about the Shoah.

Ole Frahm is living as author and performance artist in Frankfurt. His PhD thesis was published as Genealogie des Holocaust. Art Spiegelmans MAUS – A Survivior’s Tale (2006), his second book was Die Sprache des Comics (2010).

Notes

1 Epigraph: Aldo Carpi, quoted in Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone Books, 1999), p. 50.

2 Markus Streb is working on a PhD examining this material. Some will be also discussed in Ole Frahm, Hans-Joachim Hahn, and Markus Streb (eds.) Beyond MAUS: The Legacy of Holocaust Comics (Cologne: Böhlau, forthcoming).

3 Art Spiegelman, MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997). The first part was published 1986 as MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale. My Father Bleeds History.

4 Imre Kertész, Fateless (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992). Becker and Bock derive the term Muselmanization from camp language. They state: ‘Camp language even comprised a specific term for this process: muzułmaniec, a verb modeled after the Polish expression for Muselmann, as well as the noun muzułmanienie. For lack of a better term, this might be translated as Muselmanization.’ Michael Becker and Dennis Bock, “Muselmänner in Nazi Concentration Camps: Thinking Masculinity at the Extremes,” in Björn Krondorfer and Ovidiu Creanga, (eds.), The Holocaust and Masculinities: Critical Inquiries into the Presence and Absence of Men (New York: SUNY Press, 2020), pp. 129–46.

5 Joe Kubert and Bob Bernstein, “The Golem,” The Challenger no. 3 (1946): pp. 33–50, reprinted in Joe Kubert and Bill Schelly, (eds.), Joe Kubert Archives, vol. 1 (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2012), pp. 113–30. See also Markus Streb, “Early Representations of Concentration Camps in Golden Age Comic Books: Graphic Narratives, American Society, and the Holocaust,” Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art 3, no. 1 (2016): pp. 29–63. Ole Frahm, “Mickey und der Golem: Reflexionen des Holocaust im Comic,” in Bettina Bannasch and Hans-Joachim Hahn (eds.), Darstellen, Vermitteln, Aneignungen: Gegenwärtige Reflexionen des Holocaust (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 2018), pp. 215–56, here 223–6.

6 For an overview, see Ole Frahm, “Gespaltene Spuren: Der Holocaust-Comic nach MAUS – A Survivor’s Tale,” in Iris Roebling-Grau and Dirk Rupenow, (eds.), ‘Holocaust’ Fiktion: Kunst jenseits der Authentizität (Paderborn: Fink, 2015), pp. 199–218.

7 Miriam Katin’s comics can be considered an exception because she writes about how she and her mother hid from the Germans while she was a child. Nevertheless, due to her very young age in 1944–45, she herself does not consider her work as work done by a survivor. Mirjam Katin, We Are on Our Own (Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2006).

8 See, for example, Bernice Eisenstein, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (London: Picador, 2006); Michel Kichka, Second Generation: The Things I Didn’t Tell My Father (Montreuil: Europe Comics, 2016); Amy Kurzweil, Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir (New York: Catapult/Black Balloon, 2016).

9 The draft has not been published. We thank Glenn Sujo for making it available to us.

10 Glenn Sujo, “Muselmann: A Distilled Image of the Lager?,” in Griselda Pollock and Max Silverman, (eds.), Concentrationary Memories: Tracing Totalitarian Violence in Popular Culture (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 133–57, here p. 145.

11 Sharon B. Oster, “Impossible Holocaust Metaphors: The Muselmann,” Prooftexts 34, no. 3 (Fall 2014): pp. 302–48, here 316.

12 Ole Frahm, Die Sprache des Comics (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2010), chapter one.

13 Sujo, “Muselmann: A Distilled Image of the Lager?” p. 139.

14 Hanno Loewy is one of the few authors who, in his examination of Wanda Jakubowska’s film Koniec naszego świata (1964), identifies the depiction of a Muselmann in a feature film. Hanno Loewy, “The Mother of All Holocaust Films? Wanda Jakubowska’s Auschwitz Trilogy,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 24, no. 2 (June 2004): pp. 179–204, here p. 187, 189.

15 Agamben, Remnants, p. 50.

16 Ibid., p. 51, our emphasis. Since Agamben does not give an exact reference here, and others did not offer a convincing suggestion about which sequence of liberation footage he is referring to, we are very doubtful about Agamben’s reading. We are further not convinced by Jill Jarvis’s alleged identification of the scene Agamben described. Jill Jarvis, “Remnants of Muslims: Reading Agamben’s Silence,” New Literary History 45, no. 4 (Autumn 2014): pp. 707–28, p. 727. Especially problematic is also Agamben’s bold statement that this is ‘perhaps the sole image of Muselmänner we have’ (Agamben, Remnants, p. 51), ignoring for example Yehuda Bacon’s series as well as the question of if it makes sense to speak of Muselmänner after the liberation of the concentration camps.

17 Gil Anidjar, Jews and Arabs (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 141–5; Jarvis, “Remnants of Muslims,” pp. 709–11.

18 As Darren C. Marks essay ‘Sgt. Rock is Jewish?’ shows this produces certain difficulties for reading the relation to the Holocaust. Darren C. Mark, “Sgt. Rock is Jewish? Joe Kubert, Jews and the Holocaust in American Comic Books 1938–2006,” Jewish Culture and History 20, no. 2 (2019): pp. 166–87.

19 See Streb, “Early Representations,” pp. 40–1; Unknown, “Corpses of the Jury,” Voodoo 1, no.5 (January 1953); John D’Agostino, “The Living Dead,” Dark Mysteries no. 20 (October 1954): pp. 20–5; John Blummer, “The Dead Remember,” Forbidden Worlds no. 25 (January 1954): pp. 25–9. We do not have the space to discuss these stories properly.

20 More recent examples like Death’s Head Revisited, The Crow: Skinning the Wolves, or some stories in the Fubar series depict concentration camp inmates as revenge-taking remnants, too. Mark Kneece, Rod Serling, and Chris Lie, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone: Death’s-Head Revisited (New York: Walker, 2009). Chris Ryall, Jim Terry, and James O’Barr, “Returning from a Journey,” The Crow: Skinning the Wolves no. 1 (2012). And, for example, the story ‘Chain of Command.’ Jeff McClelland and Leonardo Pietro, “Chain of Command,” Fubar Summer Special no. 1 (2012).

21 For longer discussions of golems in relation to the Holocaust, see Maya Barzilai, Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters (New York: New York University Press, 2016); Jonas Engelmann, Wurzellose Kosmopoliten: Von Luftmenschen, Golems und jüdischer Popkultur (Mainz: Ventil, 2016).

22 Harry Stein and Mort Leav, “Sky Wolf: Wanted by the Nazis,” Air Fighters Comics 1, no. 3 (December 1942): pp. 16–28, here p. 17, an often used expression, compare, for example, Unknown, “The Heap,” Airboy Comics 3, no. 10 (December 1946), reprinted in Roy Thomas (ed.), The Heap: Volume One (Hornsea: PS Publishing, 2012), pp. 70–8, here p. 70. About the Heap: Roy Thomas, “Heaping It On: A Personal and Historical Introduction,” in Thomas, The Heap, pp. 2–15; Jon B. Cooke, “The Heap,” in Jon B. Cooke and George Khoury (eds.), Swampman: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers (Raleigh, NC: twomorrows publishing, 2014), pp. 18–22.

23 Stein and Leav “Skywolf: Wanted by the Nazis,” p. 17.

24 Ibid.

25 Leonard Starr, “The Heap,” Airboy Comics 5, no. 12 (January 1949), reprinted in Roy Thomas (ed.), The Heap, Volume Two (Hornsea: PS Artbooks, 2011), pp. 70–7, here p. 72.

26 Starr, “The Heap,” p. 72.

27 Ibid., p. 75.

28 Ibid., p. 75.

29 Primo Levi, If This Is a Man (London: Onion Press, 1959), p. 153.

30 Stein and Leav, “Skywolf: Wanted by the Nazis,” p. 17.

31 Harry Stein and Dan Barry, “The Heap Returns,” Air Fighters Comics 1, no. 9 (June 1943): pp. 31–42, here p. 31.

32 Jon Belfi, “The Heap Returns,” Air Fighters Comics 2, no. 10 (Fall 1945): pp. 16–25, here p. 18.

33 Unknown, “The Return of the Heap,” Airboy Comics 3, no. 4 (May 1946): pp. 31–40, here p. 31.

34 Ulrich Krafft, Comics lesen (Stuttgart: Metzler 1978), p. 41.

35 Starr, “The Heap,” p. 75.

36 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, p. 65.

37 Ibid.

38 Starr, “The Heap,” p. 77.

39 Sol Brodsky, Herschel Waldman, Robert Kanigher, Tom Sutton, and Jack Abel, “Cover,” The Heap 1, no.1 (September 1971). Airboy Comics ceased its publication of many other series because of the Comics Code in 1954.

40 Jorge Semprún, Der Tote mit meinem Namen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2002), p. 30.

41 Peter Schuck, Viele untote Körper: Über Zombies der Literatur und des Kinos (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018), pp. 195–9.

42 Another comparison between zombies as they appear in Romero’s movies and the Muselmann is provided by Jon Stratton, “The Trouble with Zombies Bare Life, Muselmänner and Displaced People,” Somatechnics 1, no. 1 (2011): pp. 188–208.

43 Oster, “Impossible Holocaust Metaphors,” p. 316.

44 Starr, “The Heap,” p. 76.

45 Imre Kertész, Fiasko (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1999), pp. 361, 371, 378.

46 Michael Becker and Dennis Bock, “‘Muselmänner’ und Häftlingsgesellschaften: Ein Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager.” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte no. 55 (2015): pp. 133–75, here p. 144.

47 Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, and Art Simek, “7 Doomed Man,” Sgt. Fury no. 2 (July 1963): pp. 3–31.

48 Ibid., p. 21.

49 Benedict Kautsky, Teufel und Verdammte: Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse aus 7 Jahren in deutschen Konzentrationslagern (Zürich: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1946), p. 158–60. See also: Becker, and Bock, “‘Muselmänner’ und Häftlingsgesellschaften,” p. 158.

50 This also refers to panel 4 on page 7, which shows the seven in their bunks, all with shoes on their feet.

51 The term commonly describes a single panel the size of a full page. For a discussion of splash pages and their functions, see Harriet Earle, “Comics and Page Bleeds,” Alluvium 2, no. 5 (October 2013), https://doi.org/10.7766/alluvium.v2.5.01.

52 Joe Kubert and Bob Haney, “Totentanz: The Unknown Soldier,” Star Spangled War Stories, no. 158 (August/September 1971): p. 1.

53 Ibid., p. 10.

54 Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996), p. 161.

55 Becker and Bock, “‘Muselmänner’ und Häftlingsgesellschaften,” p. 143.

56 Joe Kubert, Yossel: April 19, 1943 (New York: DC Comics, Inc., 2003), p. 44.

57 Becker and Bock, “‘Muselmänner’ und Häftlingsgesellschaften,” p. 147.

58 We do not assume that this is a conceptual decision that allows a general statement about the representation of Muselmänner.

59 Regarding the complexities and historical references MAUS offers, see, for example, Hillary L. Chute, Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), p. 153–96.

60 See, for example, Spiegelman, MAUS, p. 209, 253, 256.

61 Spiegelman, MAUS, p. 209.

62 See Ole Frahm, Genealogie des Holocaust: Art Spiegelmans MAUS–A Survivor’s Tale (Paderborn: Fink, 2006), pp. 207–34.

63 Hailey J. Austin, “Time Flies: Remnants of Auschwitz in Art Spiegelman’s MAUS,” Colloquy: text, theory, critique no. 33 (2017): pp. 25–38, here p. 31.

64 Spiegelman, MAUS, p. 256. The eyes are a major component of encyclopedic Muselmann descriptions, see Becker, and Bock, “‘Muselmänner’ und Häftlingsgesellschaften,” p. 143.

65 Spiegelman, MAUS, p. 257.

66 Becker and Bock, “Thinking Masculinity,” p. 139.

67 See, for example, Caroline Gille and Niels Schröder, I Got Rhythm: Das Leben der Jazzlegende Coco Schumann. Eine Graphic Novel (Berlin-Brandenburg: Be.bra-Verlag, 2014), p. 67, 69.

68 A fact that is striking given that Levi is one of the survivors who significantly contributed to making the term Muselmann well known.

69 Matteo Mastragostino and Alessandro Ranghiasci, Primo Levi (Vienna: bahoe Books, 2017), p. 71–81.

70 Ibid., p. 79.

71 Agamben, Remnants, p. 54.

72 Kath Shackleton, Zane Whittingham, and Ryan Jones, Survivors of the Holocaust (London: Hachette Childrens Group, 2016), p. 87.

73 Furthermore, there are two comics that mention the term Muselmann only once. The German I Got Rhythm: Das Leben der Jazzlegende Coco Schumann (I got rhythm: The life of jazz legend Coco Schumann) mentions the term Muselmann in one caption, linking it to the terrible food situation in a concentration camp. In the French comic Triangle Rose, one homosexual prisoner is called a Muselmann by an SS guard. See Gille and Schröder, I Got Rhythm; Michel Dufranne, Milorad Vicanović (Maza), and Christian Lerolle, Triangle Rose (Brussels: Quadrants, 2011), p. 108.

74 Aurélien Ducoudray and Eddy Vaccaro, Young: Tunis 1911–Auschwitz 1945 (Paris: Futuropolis, 2013), p. 23.

75 Again, as in Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, p. 51 [our translation], the metaphor of the ghost is used here.

76 Jarvis, “Remnants of Muslims,” p. 709.

77 Even Muslim inmates can be targeted, as a short story by Paula Bulling reminds us. Paula Bulling, “Tamgout, Buchenwald, Paris.” Kus, no. 23 (November 2015): pp. 7–50, especially pp. 17–32.

78 This reminds us of Agamben’s remark that Jews did not even die as Jews in Auschwitz: “In any case, it is certain that, with a kind of ferocious irony, the Jews knew that they would not die at Auschwitz as Jews.” Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, p. 45. Jarvis foregrounds that Agamben does not criticize the term with regards to its (colonial) history: Jarvis, “Remnants of Muslims,” p. 719.

79 Becker, and Bock, “Thinking Masculinity,” p. 138.

80 Ibid., p. 140.

81 Ducoudray and Vaccaro, Young, p. 25.

82 Becker, and Bock, “Thinking Masculinity,” p. 137.

83 Michał Gałek and Marcin Nowakowski, Episoden aus Auschwitz: Liebe im Schatten des Todes (Oświęcim-Babice: K&L Press, 2009), p. 13; Michał Gałek and Marcin Nowakowski, Epizody z Auschwitz: Miłość w cieniu zagłady (Oświęcim-Babice: K&L Press, 2009), p. 13. We would like to thank Kalina Kupczynska who helped us with the Polish version of the comic.

84 Michał Gałek and Marcin Nowakowski, Episodes from Auschwitz: Love In the Shadow of Death (Oświęcim-Babice: K&L Press, 2009), p. 13.

85 Ibid., p. 20.

86 Mirjam Wenzel, “Von der Schau zur Lust: Zur Dekonstruktion der Fotografie in den Collagen von Boris Lurie,” in Jüdisches Museum Berlin (ed.), Keine Kompromisse! Die Kunst des Boris Lurie (Berlin: Kerber, 2016), pp. 144–52.

87 Gałek and Nowakowski, Episodes from Auschwitz, p. 9.

88 Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 142, 205.

89 Zdzisław Ryn and Stanisław Kłodziński, “An der Grenze zwischen Leben und Tod: Eine Studie über die Erscheinung des ‘Muselmanns’ im Konzentrationslager,” in Die Auschwitz Hefte Band 1: Texte der polnischen Zeitschrift “Pzregląd Lekarski” über historische, psychische und medizinische Aspekte des Lebens und Sterbens in Auschwitz (Hamburg: Roger und Bernhard, 1994), pp. 89–154, here pp. 127–30.

90 Imre Kertész, Galeerentagebuch (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1993), p. 28.

91 Becker and Bock, “Thinking Masculinity,” p. 132.

92 Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (New York: Picador 2000), p. 584.