This 56-page masterpiece still makes me cry, today, still makes me cry.
As to a couple of the pages reproduced herein, and some pages to follow (I presume), Dave told me that he purposely drew them so that no genitalia would be obvious, because of the ongoing attacks on him. IIRC, he added that he had thought about leaving out drawings of female Holocaust victims, altogether, because it might have fed the then-rampant diatribe against him. (My words, not his.)
In the end, what you got/get is drawings of starving, abused, emaciated, skeleton-like victims of the few men who couldn't get over their vitriol, which arose from the ill-advised "settlement" of Europe after The War to End All Wars. That, and the resulting worldwide economic depression, which decimated Germany and the U.S., but which resulted in the U.S. becoming the "sleeping giant" that won the second-war-to-end-all-wars. As far as that goes.
Anyway, Damian's viewpoints withstanding, this is a seminal work by a master craftsman.
Are there better Shoah stories told by sequential art? Maybe. "Maus" won a Pulitzer Prize, and it was written and drawn by a mensch who descended from Shoah survivors. I'm guessing that there are others as good as "Judenhass".
But this was Dave's "secret project", done in total silence, over three-and-one-half years, until he perfected it (perfect line by line--he never did or has done better photorealistic art than this), to *his* specs, and then purposely released it to no fanfare. And, little monetary reward.
Why?
Because, he was attempting to honor the victims. Them, Judaism, and the one, true, God of Abraham.
2 comments:
This 56-page masterpiece still makes me cry, today, still makes me cry.
As to a couple of the pages reproduced herein, and some pages to follow (I presume), Dave told me that he purposely drew them so that no genitalia would be obvious, because of the ongoing attacks on him. IIRC, he added that he had thought about leaving out drawings of female Holocaust victims, altogether, because it might have fed the then-rampant diatribe against him. (My words, not his.)
In the end, what you got/get is drawings of starving, abused, emaciated, skeleton-like victims of the few men who couldn't get over their vitriol, which arose from the ill-advised "settlement" of Europe after The War to End All Wars. That, and the resulting worldwide economic depression, which decimated Germany and the U.S., but which resulted in the U.S. becoming the "sleeping giant" that won the second-war-to-end-all-wars. As far as that goes.
Anyway, Damian's viewpoints withstanding, this is a seminal work by a master craftsman.
Are there better Shoah stories told by sequential art? Maybe. "Maus" won a Pulitzer Prize, and it was written and drawn by a mensch who descended from Shoah survivors. I'm guessing that there are others as good as "Judenhass".
But this was Dave's "secret project", done in total silence, over three-and-one-half years, until he perfected it (perfect line by line--he never did or has done better photorealistic art than this), to *his* specs, and then purposely released it to no fanfare. And, little monetary reward.
Why?
Because, he was attempting to honor the victims. Them, Judaism, and the one, true, God of Abraham.
May God bless you, Dave.
Oh, Jeff, you do make me laugh!
-- Damian
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