Literature of the Holocaust and the Therapeutic Power of Writing

“Paper has more patience than people” – Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947)

Throughout history, language and the written word have played crucial roles in human civilization, serving as vehicles for communication, cultural expression, the preservation and spread of knowledge, and societal development. From ancient cave paintings, scriptures and glyphs to movies, books, TV and music, the evolution of language and writing reflects humanity's ongoing quest for connection, expression, and understanding. Through its many forms throughout history, what has remained true is the necessity of communication for the success and advancement of the human race, in all facets of life. “Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky, a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford. “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.” Language is a tool, a construct, a throughline. It is simultaneously a weapon and a shield; it can be used to educate and inspire, and it can be used for survival and unity.

As an English major, I have consumed a vast multitude of texts of all kinds throughout my time in undergrad. I’ve read countless books and articles for classes, watched many movies, listened to hundreds of albums, and rewatched my favorite show Steven Universe three times. I’ve taken in countless perspectives on a wide range of subjects, and yet, there’s so much more out there–to learn about, to listen to, to be inspired by–that I’ve barely scratched the surface. However, rather than being on the pursuit of something new, I constantly find myself coming back to select pieces of media that I’ve already read, watched or listened to multiple times, and enjoying them again, and again, and again. I’ve played through Pokemon Black and White more times than I can count on my ten fingers, and I enjoy it more and more each time. It’s incredibly comforting and nostalgic for me, and it brings me great joy to try new things in the game each time I play. In essence, it’s therapeutic. I find a sense of healing my inner child when I engage in this sort of practice. I believe this to be a common experience among many to have this sort of relationship with any form of media, especially books.

But in truth, I haven’t exactly been much of a book reader. In fact, there have been times in my life where I genuinely hated it, even in college. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the ripe age of eight years old, so focusing and giving my total attention to anything has always been difficult for me, let alone reading a book (especially one without pictures). Assigned reading for school is never the most fun you can have reading anything, and many Drexel students will echo that sentiment. Despite all my years of disinterest, somewhere along the line a light went off in my brain. It took me venturing off on my own, outside of academic requirements, and finding a world of literature that I have since come to love to get me back into reading, and it all started around a year ago with what is now one of, if not my absolute favorite, historical fiction novels.

Published in 2005, Markus Zusaks’s The Book Thief has been hailed as a modern classic since its release, winning a number of awards and being called one of the best books of all time by many. It’s set in Nazi Germany during the time of World War II, and tackles themes such as mortality, love, and most importantly, the power of language; the novel is, in my eyes, a celebration of the divine influence of the written word in and of itself. Narrated by Death (yes, Death itself), the story centers around a young girl named Liesel Meminger, who, at the very beginning of the book, loses her brother to an unspecified illness. The two were on the way, with their mom (whose husband, Liesel’s father, was taken away by Nazis due to being a communist), to meet their new foster parents, Rosa and Hans Hubermann, but only Liesel arrives. Her mother drops her off, and is never to be seen again. As Liesel learns to adapt to her new home in Molching, a fictional town in the outskirts of the nonfictional city of Munich in Germany, she becomes exposed to the many horrors of the Second World War. Tyranny, hatred and the influence of Adolf Hitler plague those around her. The Nazi party begins to burn books out in the street, eradicating all messages that might even slightly oppose their values. Liesel sees the humanity of these books, and begins to steal some to take home. She recognizes the power of creating and sharing her own writing despite barely being able to read or write herself. Hans Hubermann, her foster father, teaches her how to read and write through the books she steals, and develops a deep bond with Liesel as a result.

Evidently, language and the written word are a major theme in The Book Thief. Throughout the novel, Liesel develops a deep and passionate love for language. Her relationship with the written word evolves as she matures. As a young child, she learns how to read and write through a book she finds on the ground at her brother’s funeral called The Gravedigger’s Handbook. Each book she steals coincides with a new chapter of her life, as well as a new level of maturity and understanding of the world. As she gets older, and the Second World War rages on, she not only learns how language can unite those around her but also how it can be used to control people. Liesel notices the influence of Adolf Hitler in her new hometown of Molching, Germany; the rise of the Nazi party affects the townspeople, her friends, and eventually her family, who hide a Jewish refugee named Max Vandenburg in their basement amid catastrophic times. She develops a friendship with Max, who is a writer, learning from his stories and teaching him a thing or two about expression and creativity in the process. Liesel begins to understand not only how language is used to oppress Jewish and other minority groups in Europe, but also how it serves as a tool that she uses to communicate love, kindness, and compassion in a cruel world. These relationships that Liesel cultivates throughout the novel each foster a different aspect of her personality, and, in turn, inspire her to write and work through hardships in her life with writing as her outlet. 

The therapeutic power of language cannot be understated, especially in regards to Liesel. Her writing is an escape for her; her lessons with Hans and her own writing are something she looks forward to every night, and she is motivated to keep learning as she writes, healing her trauma in the process. However, The Book Thief also highlights the power of language through its contradictory nature. The novel’s main focus is the internal journey of Liesel and her battle against the world around her. Because of the hardships of her personal life and the societal structure of Germany around the time of World War II, she feels the need to establish a sense of personal identity. That identity, threatened by the difficulties of life with her foster family, the cruelty of people–whether it be among friends, family, or societal discrimination–and the loss of loved ones, is shaped by her ability to use her writing as a means to stand up for the good of the world and those around her that inspire her to fight in the name of love.

But World War II, unlike most other things in The Book Thief, was, in fact, not a fictional event. It was very much a real thing and it happened less than one hundred years ago. While Liesel’s lived experiences through Nazi Germany were fictitious, the Holocaust itself, through its many concentration camps, brutalities, abuses, crimes, and lives lost, was a very nonfictional hell on Earth. Liesel observes Nazi ideology begin to affect her life in Molching; Hitler’s portrait and swastikas are hung in her school, Hitler Youth groups begin recruiting her and her peers, and despite his strong opposition of them, Hans fills out an application to join the Nazi party because his business begins to suffer from non-affiliation. These happenings in the novel are all based on real events that were conducted by the Nazi party in the late 1930s and early 40s.

I was surprised to learn that Zusak was Australian after reading the book, so I became interested to learn about his motivations for writing it. Turns out, his parents grew up in Germany and Austria during the time of World War II. “With no disrespect to my dad,” he said in an interview,  “it was my mum’s world at the outskirts of Munich that had the greatest influence on me. That’s why I chose Liesel. Of course, the instant I fictionalized something, it wasn’t her anymore. Liesel ceased being my mother on page eight or nine and became herself, even when I borrowed from my mother’s life story.” (Stillman) Everyone who writes about the Holocaust does so for a reason. Many have deep connections with the War, the Holocaust itself, Judaism or other surrounding elements that inspire them to engage with it, in efforts to make something out of it or heal some element of their being that has been corrupted by the cruelties of the Holocaust. For Zusak, his connection to the world his parents taught him about really opened up the door for him to get creative and be inspired, telling a fictional story with a real, concrete feeling that impacted millions of readers. 

The Book Thief was incredibly successful; in fact, it became so successful that it received a film adaptation in 2013, just eight years after its initial publication. However, the film is quite different from the book in a few aspects that are, in my opinion, detrimental to the viewer’s interpretation of the story and stray a little too far from what I believe Zusak’s intentions to be. For starters, the characters portrayed as being much more well off in the film than they are in the book; for instance, Max is described as having hair “like twigs” in the book, whereas in the movie his hair is neatly gelled into place and his clothing is much nicer than what you would think a poor Jew in hiding would be wearing. Additionally, the movie misses the mark for me in terms of its ending, in which it painfully employs a classic Hollywood cliché. In the book, after the final bombing in the story, Liesel’s whole family and Rudy are already dead, making her final moment with the narrator, Death, all the more impactful. In the movie, Rudy is still alive, and when Liesel tries to talk to him, he says “there’s something I have to tell you, I lo–” and then his voice cuts and he dies. I really didn’t like how the movie handled this; the stark cruelty of everyone around her being already dead is what makes it so devastating and gut-wrenching in the book. Other film adaptations of Holocaust literature have done a much better job at staying faithful to the text, but I digress. More on that later.

For many, simply reading stories about the Holocaust can be incredibly impactful in their own right. In my experiences, reading Holocaust literature has helped me to much better understand my place in the world as a Jewish person, as well as make connections between past and present-day antisemitism. Liesel’s story in The Book Thief is just one example out of a plethora of media created about or inspired by the events of the Holocaust. Countless other works have been created–fictional or otherwise–that are all unified by writing as a means of expression. This kind of communicative self-expression is the catalyst node in the family tree of shared human experiences that constitute the way in which we as humans connect with and understand each other.

One such work is Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. Discovered in the attic of the annex in which her family hid from Nazis in Amsterdam, her diary is an unfiltered look into the mind of an incredibly intelligent and mature young Jewish girl who spent the last three years of her life in secret. Within her entries are reflections on her experiences, thoughts, and emotions as she works through the challenges of adolescence amid the horrors of war. They capture the daily struggles, fears, hopes, and dreams of a young girl forced to live in confinement, and in constant fear of discovery and persecution. The Diary of a Young Girl highlights the multifaceted staying power of language. Notably, the diary was a source of therapy for Anne, providing an outlet for her to express her innermost feelings, insights and frustrations: “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn,” writes Anne (Frank, 215). Her conversational tone–thanks in part to the purpose of her writing in a diary being due to a lack of truly close friends, and consequently, wanting the diary itself to be her friend–emphasizes her youthful innocence throughout all of this, making the emotional impact of the devastating realities of her world all the more sorrowful.

At the same time, her diary is also now, decades later, a historical document. It’s a firsthand account of a Jewish person’s life during the Holocaust, providing invaluable historical insight into the persecution of Jews by the Nazis and how it affected their lives. Her vivid descriptions and personal anecdotes offer a uniquely devastating human perspective on the larger events unfolding around her. Despite her spending over two years of her life huddled up in what is essentially an attic, her understanding of the sheer scope of the outside world knows no bounds. Her writing expresses a deep sense of connectedness with the world, and her resilience through its hardships endures.

Anne’s journey with writing and her own demons grows and changes over time, alongside her relationships. Her parents are of frequent subjects in her writing; as she matures into her teenage years, her once close relationship with her father becomes detached. She once would seek out advice from him and found him comforting in times of distress, but by the end of her writings, she became distant: “I concealed from Daddy everything that perturbed me; I never shared my ideals with him [...] I was pushing him away from me.” (Frank, 235) The solitude of life in the annex was life-changing, but it didn’t stop the natural progression of the human minds and bodies that existed within it, and neither did it stop the ever-evolving chronicles of Anne’s life that would come to be The Diary of a Young Girl. 

In contrast to The Book Thief, Anne seems to learn about her relationships through her writing, whereas Liesel learns to read and write through her relationships. Through each new book Liesel steals and through each relationship she fosters and deepens, she furthers her worldview, intellect and sense of identity, which is reflected in her pursuit of knowledge, her writing and the way she carries herself. Anne, on the other hand, uses her experiences in the annex as fuel to drive her writing and creativity, coming to terms with her reality in a way that is as productive and helpful for her mentally as it is creatively. The Diary of a Young Girl is a seminal work, one that has stood the test of time and one that will go on to inform, educate and inspire future generations. In her diary, Anne expresses her desire to become a writer and create something that is bigger than herself: “I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me.” (Frank, 195) Despite her untimely death at the age of sixteen, she certainly achieved her goal.

Literature of the Holocaust possesses a unique therapeutic power, offering both healing and understanding to survivors, their descendants, and society at large. For survivors of the Holocaust, sharing their stories through literature can validate their experiences and provide a sense of acknowledgment and recognition for the suffering they endured. It helps them process their trauma and integrate it into their personal narratives. It also serves as immortalized proof of the atrocities committed during this dark period in history. By bearing witness to the suffering, loss, and resilience of Holocaust victims, survivors, and their descendants, literature ensures that their stories are not forgotten and that future generations understand the horrors of genocide. Additionally, reading Holocaust literature fosters empathy and connection with the experiences of survivors and victims. It allows readers to step into the shoes of those who lived through the Holocaust, cultivating a deeper understanding of the human cost of hatred, prejudice, and violence.

In my opinion, no book offers a better first hand account of a Jewish person’s experiences in the Holocaust than Elie Wiesel’s Night, a memoir written about Wiesel’s personal experiences in the Auschwitz concentration camp. I first read this book in my tenth grade English class and it absolutely blew my mind, but re-reading it for the sake of this project really put into perspective how important of a work it truly is. It’s a brutally honest account of the horrors of his lived experiences, the immense scope of human good and evil, and the innate persistence of the desire to survive. Published in 1960, fifteen years after the liberation of the last concentration camp Wiesel lived at, it was his first ever book. "I wanted to be sure that the words I was going to use about this event were the proper words," he said in an interview with Oprah (Winfrey). Since then, Wiesel has gone on to publish forty books, eradicating his previous silence and harnessing his inner creativity and passions to share his stories with the world.

The first-person narrative in Night provides a powerful, authentic voice that helps readers understand the horrors of the Holocaust on an intimate level. Wiesel's sparse and haunting prose style captures the bleakness and horror of his experiences. His book is a textbook example of the potency of “short and sweet”. You can finish the book in a single afternoon, but it will have you thinking about what you just read for weeks to come. His style as a writer is flawless in its minimalism, his desperation shining through in every sentence. Take, for example, the following quote: “The train stopped in Kaschau, a small town on the Czechoslovakian border. We realized then that we were not staying in Hungary. Our eyes opened. Too late.” (Wiesel, p. 23) The power in these short phrases is astronomical, highlighting Wiesel’s keen observations and sense of urgency throughout. His style is what transforms the book from an impactful account of the Holocaust into a deeply profound and personal story of survival.

Night was written over a decade after Wiesel’s experiences in the Holocaust, a very different way of presenting his story in comparison to the written almost in real time accounts in The Diary of a Young Girl. The book was the catalyst for Wiesel’s whole career to follow, and he has described it as the birth of his freedom as a writer: “We may use words to break the prison, to break the walls around the prison. That is why I wrote that book, and that is why I wrote the others,” he remarks in a speech (Facing History & Ourselves). Clearly, writing the novel opened the door for him to come into his own in self-expression through his writing.

I’ve written a great deal here about the perspectives of victims and survivors of the Holocaust, and for good reason. Their ability to so eloquently detail their experiences fighting through the unimaginable cruelty of the reign of Nazi Germany, let alone relive those experiences internally at all, is nothing short of commendable and brave. However, to get a full picture of the time period, it’s important to also examine the mindset of the Nazi perpetrators, not because there is any argument that the Nazis were in the right throughout any of this, rather that the perspectives and thought processes of the Nazis are crucial in understanding the Holocaust and in examining Holocaust literature.

One such perspective has been immortalized in the form of Commandant of Auschwitz, the autobiography of German SS officer and head honcho of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Höss. Second in command to Heinrich Himmler, he was in charge of the largest concentration camp in Nazi Germany, from its establishment in 1940 through 1943. In that time, over one million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz. After the war had ended, he was taken prisoner by the British, who then handed him over to Poland, who tried and sentenced him to death. His final stop would be his return to Auschwitz, where he was hung, finally enjoying a taste of his own medicine. It was during the time following his trial where he was ordered to recount his life story in written form, leading to the creation of this autobiography.

Unsurprisingly, Höss found everyone to blame for the atrocities that occurred at Auschwitz except for himself. In reading this autobiography it is abundantly clear that he believed himself to be a saint among horrific people. He couldn’t blame himself for anything that went on at Auschwitz, because the orders he carried out were simply that: just orders given to him by Himmler. He couldn’t blame himself for the corrupt actions of the guards who would abuse their positions of power against the prisoners because they were merely assigned to him. He even blamed the prisoners themselves for their abusive and exploitative actions towards each other, rather than the extreme cruelty that he himself subjected them to. Throughout its 250+ pages, Commandant of Auschwitz sees Höss painting himself in golden, angelic light, a diamond in the rough amidst a sea of bloody evil.

The book is littered with antisemitism. Even in acknowledging his unspeakable cruelty against the entire Jewish population, his disdain persists: "I also see now that the extermination of the Jews was fundamentally wrong. Precisely because of these mass exterminations, Germany has drawn upon herself the hatred of the entire world. It in no way served the cause of anti-Semitism, but on the contrary brought the Jews far closer to their ultimate objective." (Höss, 197-198) By insinuating that Jews as a group of people even have an “ultimate objective” is incredibly antisemitic, but I’ll save my essay on that one for another time. Höss tried so hard to prove his innocence throughout this whole book, but just fell completely flat on his face. He frames every action he takes as Commandant under the guise of it being just an order, therefore he has done nothing wrong. There is barely a hint of any sort of apology or sympathy to his victims within.

While Commandant of Auschwitz may be hardcore Nazi propaganda, the circumstances in which it was written and the purpose it served to Höss are crucial in understanding the Holocaust, as well as being able to prevent catastrophes of a similar nature from occurring again. Through his writing, Höss maintained his sanity whilst under incarceration by the Polish by funneling every last inch of the inner workings of his mind into his autobiography. Despite us as readers being able to see right through his hypocrisy, the writing process of the book helped Höss to contextualize the events of his entire life, up until the very end, when he writes, "Let the public continue to regard me as the blood-thirsty beast, the cruel sadist and the mass murderer; for the masses could never imagine the commandant of Auschwitz in any other light. They could never understand that he, too, had a heart and that he was not evil." (Höss, 202) There is some element of writing therapy within his own delusions, albeit to justify the cruelty he perpetrated on others. It reminded me of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s quote from The Gulag Archipelago: “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…” (Solzhenitsyn) Even through all his years of evildoing he still is able to sympathize with himself and acknowledge that he is just a human being like everyone else.

Arguably the most iconic Holocaust movie is 1993’s Schindler’s List. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film tells the story of Oskar Schindler (portrayed by Liam Neeson), a German industrialist, factory owner and member of the Nazi Party who, during the Second World War, saved the lives of over a thousand Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories in occupied Poland. The movie’s screenplay was an adaptation of the 1982 book Schindler’s Ark, written by Thomas Kineally, a nonfiction novel that follows a very similar story to the one told in the movie. Although it was released just over thirty years ago, Schindler’s List was shot entirely in black and white; Spielberg wanted to approach the film in more of a documentary style to accurately convey the events of Schindler’s life and the impact of the Holocaust. Despite his Nazi Party membership, he is quick to realize the cruelty of the Holocaust. In one particular scene, he notices a young Jewish girl wearing a red coat–the only element of the whole movie that is shown in color–hiding from the Nazis, and later sees her body on a wagonload of dead Jews.

Deeply affected by this, Schindler smartly maintains his relations with the SS and continues receiving their support, despite having ulterior motives. Schindler worked closely with his Jewish accountant, Itzhak Stern, to coordinate finances and logistics for his factories, and the two would go on to create the namesake list of names of workers who would be sent to a factory of Schindler’s instead of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Oskar Schindler’s story has become so well known and important to the history of the Holocaust, he was even buried at the Catholic cemetery atop Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and he and his wife were named “Righteous Among the Nations” by the state of Israel in the year of the film’s release.

Oskar Schindler saw the flaws in his own character where Rudolph Höss could not. Schindler wasn’t exactly a saint by any means; his continued affiliation with the Nazi Party is a major point of criticism of his story by scholars and general audiences alike, and he often took risks in bribing SS officers in an effort to help his Jewish factory employees, even though the people he put at risk were the factory workers themselves. That said, I and many others agree that he was simply doing what he had to and could do in his position of power to help the Jews in ways that mattered–the difference between them surviving or dying. Schindler was able to take a step back and recognize the horrors going on around him, and he did what he could in his power to ever so slightly change the outcome of the genocide. Höss, on the other hand, couldn’t even blame himself in the slightest.

Despite its massive success and immense cultural impact, the film almost never came to be. Spielberg was originally not very into the idea of making the movie; the Jaws and E.T. director was at a point in his career where he was finding massive success creating entertainment for the masses, and was “not ready” to create such a personal film. However, through the creation of his films The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, which he claimed “gave him the courage” to create Schindler’s List, the film eventually began production and Spielberg became incredibly passionate about the project. When reflecting on the film, he said: “this is the most important experience I’ve had being a film director and a storyteller, because I don’t think I’ll ever do something, anything, as important to my life, the way this film personally affected me and my family [...] for me, this is something I will always be proudest of.” (NBC News) huIt’s amazing to me that a piece of media can be as impactful on its audience as it is on its creators. Spielberg was often the target of antisemitic scrutiny throughout his life, but especially in his younger years he was often bullied at school and had trouble navigating life as a young Jewish adult. "I was embarrassed, I was self-conscious, I was always aware I stood out because of my Jewishness," the director recalls. "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible." (Weinraub) Although Schindler’s List tackles a way bigger subject than just antisemitism as it exists in a vacuum, creating the film was incredibly personal to Spielberg and helped him to reconcile with his past. Spielberg also comes from a family of Holocaust survivors himself, and often felt very intense emotions while shooting the film. “In some cases, nobody was acting.” (NBC News)

Moving onto another 90's classic of a completely different medium brings us to Art Spiegelman’s Maus. It’s a graphic novel that tells the story of the life of his father Vladek, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, was published in 1991 and employs the literary technique of a frame story, a story within a story, to authentically convey how Spiegelman interviewed his father to listen to his stories. Maus was considered incredibly innovative upon its release; it was the first of its kind to use the graphic novel format to tell a serious, historical narrative. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, which was a landmark achievement for graphic novels. Its critical success has paved the way for the normalization of graphic novels as serious literature, and as a result, it is frequently studied in academic settings and is considered a cornerstone in Holocaust studies.  

Maus opens with Spiegelman visiting his father to learn about his experiences in the Holocaust for a comic he plans to make, weaving together Vladek’s experiences in Europe and the present events in Queens, New York where he lives. Vladek recounts his early life, including his marriage to Anja Zylberberg, a wealthy young woman, and the two have a son named Richieu. Vladek's textile factory thrives, but the family’s fortunes begin to change with the rise of the Nazis. The power of storytelling is abundantly clear with Maus; by situating the entire text as Spiegelman interviewing his father, it emphasizes the humanity in Vladek’s stories, interweaving them with personality and real-time interruptions or comments. Additionally, by portraying the different nationalities as different animals, it underscores the dynamic and relations between those groups in the time of World War II by subliminally reinforcing how we understand how those animals interact with each other. There are the obvious comparisons of the game of cat and mouse, with the Germans being the predators and the Jews being the prey, and the Polish police being pigs. I also believe that it helps us as readers to better understand the characters because they are portrayed as animals. There is a certain element of humanity to the animalization of these characters because it allows the reader to more easily sympathize with the Jewish mice and feel disdain towards the German cats.

Maus ends with the end of the war and Vladek’s liberation, but his struggle for survival continues. He and Anja are eventually reunited, and they emigrate to the United States. As is the case with many survivors, however, the trauma of the Holocaust profoundly affects their post-war lives, particularly their relationship with their second son and author of Maus, Art. The story then returns to the present, exploring the strained relationship between Art and Vladek. Art grapples with his father’s difficult personality and the weight of inherited trauma. Coupled with this, the narrative also delves into Art’s process of creating Maus and the emotional burden of retelling Vladek’s story. Concluding with the death of his father, Maus in essence is Art’s reflection on the impact of his father’s experiences on his own life. Reconciling his relationship with his father was a big part of writing Maus for Spiegelman. For many years, he did not see his father. “I had gotten away, as far away as I could. It was a way for us to talk, and for him to have a son that was actually listening to him,” said Spiegelman (BBC). In re-entering his life and interviewing him, visiting him time and time again to learn more, he became re-integrated with Vladek and in turn helped to heal their relationship and a part of himself.

The therapeutic element of Spiegelman’s creation of Maus comes in the form of his depiction of his own human self dealing with the losses of both his mother and father. Near the end of the second volume, there is a page on which a human Art, wearing a mouse mask, spills about his feelings after the release of his book and its success. He recounts: “At least fifteen foreign editions are coming out. I’ve gotten 4 serious offers to turn my book into a TV special or movie. (I don’t wanna.) In May 1968 my mother killed herself. (She left no note.) Lately I’ve been feeling depressed.” (Spiegelman, p. 201) This brief excerpt highlights Spiegelman's passion and dedication to his craft; by spilling his innermost feelings onto the page through his cartoons, his seriousness shines through. By the end of Maus, when Vladek dies, Spiegelman is left only with his story to tell. 

Spiegelman’s graphic novel, despite being an account of his father’s life and not his, bears many striking similarities to The Diary of a Young Girl in its themes of identity, resilience, and the legacy of each story. With both protagonists’ lives being heavily centered around their Jewish identity, whether they asked for it to be or not, this identity heavily influences their storytelling and their reconciliation with their own lives. For Anne, it shaped her upbringing in the Jewish ghetto and later her life in the annex, as well as her writing. For Vladek, it was a pillar of his entire life’s story, being abundantly clear in his stories he told his son, showing sympathy for his fellow Jews and for himself, recognizing the trauma he endured throughout his life as a survivor of the Holocaust. Despite Frank’s untimely passing, her story would live on, becoming an essential piece of Holocaust literature and general work of nonfiction. Vladek’s story did as well; his immortalization in cartoon mouse form has since become an essential component in modern Holocaust teachings. I read Maus in the same tenth grade English class as I did Night, and at the time, I honestly enjoyed it a lot more because it was so easy to pick up and dive into. The accessibility factor of both of these works is a testament to how powerful and widely read they both are.

Every text I have mentioned here is massively successful and impactful. The Book Thief has been translated into sixty-three different languages and has sold over seventeen million copies, The Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into seventy different languages and sold over thirty million copies, Schindler’s List has grossed over $320 million worldwide in the box office, and so on and so forth. The legacy of the Holocaust has affected not just its survivors, not just Jews, not just people who lived through the war but people of all ages, all backgrounds and from all over the world. The global trauma and pain that humans have experienced from our collective loss of over six million Jewish lives in the Holocaust is one that we are still growing and healing from. It’s important that we as a collective human race share our thoughts and feelings about the Holocaust and subsequent genocides so that we may heal from them, and better understand how to prevent them from happening ever again.

Through writing this essay and reading and watching all of these texts, I have pondered and reflected on my own experiences as a Jewish person and my identity as a Jew. Taking on this project and engaging with these texts have helped me to contextualize my identity and look back on my upbringing. Strangely, I feel as though I’ve re-established my place in my Jewish identity by writing about the experiences and identities of a myriad of other Jewish people, fictitious or otherwise. I am comforted by these stories despite many of them coming from a place of extreme struggle and hardship. I am comforted by the fact that these stories have been shared with the world, let alone anyone at all. I feel incredibly lucky to feel a sense of connection to these stories, and to understand even a small fraction of Jewish history and how I ended up in the place I currently find myself in. Through my time at Drexel as an English major, writing has affirmed my belief in myself and my faith in the world time and time again, and I hope to continue this practice for the rest of my life, for the sake of myself and the world around me.

Works Cited

BBC Archive. “1992: Art Spiegelman on the CREATION of MAUS | The Late Show | Classic Interviews | BBC Archive.” YouTube, YouTube, 14 July 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE7uRyQxM1U&ab_channel=BBCArchive. 

Facing History & Ourselves. “‘We May Use Words to Break the Prison’: Elie Wiesel on Writing Night.” YouTube, YouTube, 31 Aug. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgAZQXcGxVE&ab_channel=FacingHistory%26Ourselves. 

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Contact Publishing, 1947.

Höss, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz. 1956.

NBC News. “Steven Spielberg On The Legacy Of ‘Schindler’s List’ 25 Years Later | NBC Nightly News.” YouTube, YouTube, 6 Dec. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbZlsL0AD4o&ab_channel=NBCNews. 

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“WAP” and Policing Black Women in Rap

On August 7th, 2020, rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion released their massively popular and iconic single, “WAP”. An acronym for “Wet Ass Pussy,” the song is an endlessly quotable anthem for Black women’s sexuality, empowering them in their desires by putting their own pleasures to the forefront, completely unfiltered. “WAP” wastes no time getting its point across; the beat incorporates a repeating sample from Frank Ski’s single “Whores in This House” while Cardi B opens with the hook: “I said certified freak, seven days a week / Wet-ass pussy, make that pull out game weak”. It quickly received mass acclaim from fans and critics alike, with publications such as Rolling Stone and NPR naming it the best song of the year.

Unsurprisingly, not even a day later, conservative backlash against the song had already spread like wildfire on social media, with many conservative political figures and internet personalities taking to Twitter or their podcasts to express their disdain for the song. “Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion just set the entire female gender back by 100 years with their disgusting & vile ‘WAP’ song,” tweeted DeAnna Lorraine, a former republican congressional candidate who lost to Nancy Pelosi, said on Twitter. Reactions of similar nature from people of a similar nature permeated throughout the internet in the days following the song’s release, most infamously clips of conservative political commentator Ben Shaprio’s reading aloud of the lyrics on his podcast. In short, the general reaction from conservatives to the song was that it was some sort of threat to their idea of what a “proper” woman should be.

But why was “WAP” the catalyst for a new wave of conservative outcry when people talk about sex in rap all the time? In the year when other sexually explicit rap songs such as Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” and Pop Smoke & Lil Tjay’s “Mood Swings” topped the charts right alongside Cardi and Megan, why did they receive all the backlash? Unfortunately, conservatives being upset at two massively successful Black women talking about sex in a song is by no means a flash in the pan. For the politicians and podcasters, harping on whatever the next viral thing to oppose helps retain their image and keep their followers conditioned, but for the millions of other right-wingers tweeting and posting about their distaste for the song, it speaks to the racially motivated policing of Black women’s sexuality, a long-standing pillar of conservative rhetoric. In other words, this was nothing new, and yet, neither was the content of the song itself.

Black women have been talking about sex in hip-hop since the inception of the genre, with its roots tracing back to blues and R&B. Salt-N-Pepa’s “Let’s Talk About Sex”, released in 1990, 30 years prior to Cardi and Megan’s track, calls attention to safe sex practices, harm reduction and awareness of promiscuity among the youth. TLC’s single “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg”, released a year later in 1991, tackles similar subjects. Both songs feature Black women candidly talking about sex in a fun and playful yet informative way. “So we just talking about something in a fun way,” said T-Boz of TLC in an interview (YouTube) If you’re gonna have sex, we’re singing use protection, but then again, since you’re doing it, let’s talk about it”. Clearly, women in hip-hop being open about sex has been around for a long time, and while there are more lighthearted songs such as these, sexually explicit anthems created by Black women a la “WAP” have also been around for just as long. Female rap duo BWP (Bytches With Problems) released their most popular song “Two Minute Brother” also in 1991, in which members Lyndah McCaskill and Tanisha Michele Morgan drop boastful bars about their sexual pleasures, and making fun of partners who are unable to please them properly; “The beautiful was cold three inches long / Now I'm pissed and I'm ready to bitch / But my cunt's so horny, I don't give a shit / 'Cause I'm one nasty ass bitch / And I need something up in my clit / I only got half of his, I'm still ticked / Aw, what the hell, just go for it” asserting herself as a “nasty ass bitch”, Lyndah unabashedly asserts her horniness on the track, putting her desires first and the man’s second. It speaks to the notion that songs that empower women’s sexuality have been a mainstay in hip-hop for decades, and that trend will most certainly continue. Tracks such as “Two Minute Brother” and “WAP” demonstrate the power of art–more specifically music–as a means of expressing oneself; McCaskill said in an interview: "When I wrote the lyrics to the song it was kind of empowering for me because it was all the things that I wanted to say but was never able to say". (Okayplayer)

However, as long-standing as tracks such as these are, backlash to sexually explicit content in songs created by Black women has also been around the whole time. Lyor Cohen, head of Rush Associated Labels, who released BWP’s debut album The Bytches, chose to remove a line from the album, stating "For 7½ years in this business, I've stretched all bounds of what people put on record...but this line goes above and beyond''. (Orlando Sentinel) Mark Sexx, producer and co-writer of the album, responded by saying "If it was the Geto Boys or 2 Live Crew saying that line, I'm sure it would be OK with him... but as soon as a woman starts saying it, it's a problem. That's sexism,” to which McCaskill wholeheartedly agreed. This is just one example of men trying to censor the artistic expression and free thinking of women because they were simply uncomfortable with the lyrics. When men rap about their sexual desires and acts in ways that degrade women or objectify them, no one bats an eye. But when women do it, especially Black women, people take action to physically alter the art or get rid of it entirely. Despite this, songs of a similar nature would continue to be created and reach new levels of popularity throughout the years, thanks to the bold and ever creative women emcees of the 90s and 2000s such as Lil Kim’s “Big Momma Thang”, Foxy Brown’s “Ill Na Na” and Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda”, bringing us to the 2020s with Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP”, and where we are today with Sexyy Red’s “Poundtown” and Ice Spice’s “Munch (Feelin’ U)”.

With the ever-increasing popularity and success of women’s sexual anthems such as “WAP”, attitudes surrounding the topic have fortunately become much more welcoming and celebratory, with fans of all genders being able to appreciate these songs. Sexually explicit music has since been incredibly normalized in the years since the early days of hip-hop. Cardi B herself has even defended the song as not being as explicit as people say it is: “The people that the song bothers are usually conservatives or really religious people, but my thing is I grew up listening to this type of music," she said in an interview. (People) "Other people might think it's strange and vulgar, but to me, it's almost like really normal, you know what I'm saying?" Megan put it much more bluntly: “Them people crazy — why you worried about my WAP?" (People)

In sum, the conservative backlash against "WAP" underscores a long-standing pattern of policing Black women's sexuality in hip-hop. Despite the song's widespread critical and fan acclaim and celebration of women’s sexual empowerment, it ignited controversy reminiscent of past instances where sexually explicit content in songs created by Black women was met with criticism, and at times, censorship. However, this reaction only serves to highlight the enduring power of Black women in hip-hop to boldly express themselves and challenge societal norms. From pioneers like Salt-N-Pepa and TLC to contemporary icons like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, female emcees have consistently used their art to assert their autonomy and reshape perceptions of their sexuality. As the hip-hop world continues to evolve, so too does the impact and influence of women in the genre. In the face of criticism, women in rap remain unapologetic, affirming the validity of their expression and reminding detractors that their voices deserve to be heard.

Works Cited

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/wet-ass-pussy-ben-shapiro-conservative-backlash-1042491/?sub_action=logged_in

https://www.okayplayer.com/originals/sex-rap-songs-90s-female-rappers-cardi-b-wap.html

TLC interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3zPrBQ-ees&t=270s

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/1990/12/09/lyrics-censored-sexism-says-rap-producer/

https://people.com/music/cardi-b-surprised-by-conservatives-reaction-to-wap/

Liz Chesla on “You Cannot Forbid the Flower” — Interview

I had the pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth Lukacs Chesla, whose debut novel You Cannot Forbid the Flower is out now via Tolsun Books. It’s a harrowing tale of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 from her father’s perspective, part true stories and part historical fiction. The following is a transcription of our conversation.

Lucy Buchman: I wanted to ask, when you had the idea for the book or realized this was something you wanted to write about, was there anything that, like, you had a moment that inspired you to start writing the book or was it kinda like overtime, just hearing about all the stories and everything?

Liz Chesla: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it was a little of both. I knew a long time ago that I wanted to write this book, or something like this book. But I think it only fell into place more recently, when I had taken some writing classes and just really started to see myself as the writer that could pull this off. You know, and learning a lot about flash fiction, for example, and playing with different structures was really, really helpful.

LB: When did you start writing it?

LC: Well, I had been writing down my dad’s stories back in the 80s and 90s, so a long time ago.

LB: Oh, wow!

LC: Yeah, up until through he died. But he was very reticent, you know, so he didn’t have a lot of stories or didn’t share very much. So I didn’t have a ton to go on, but I did a lot of research. And thankfully, there are a lot of first person accounts that are available online in and in other books. I mean, it was such a powerful and momentous event, and so a lot of people, you know, those who were able to escape did tell their stories.

LB: When did it turn from a series of ideas and stories that you had into a fully-fledged project that you sought out to complete?

LC: So, I had the idea for the general structure of it for a while. And then, like I said I was doing my own writing practice. Then, I found about Tolsun, my publisher Tolsun books, had a call for proposals. And I’m extraordinarily fortunate to have seen that and to have submitted and been accepted. So I actually had a contract before I had a book, but you know, I’m the kind of writer that really needs a deadline, so that enabled me to get it done. At that time, too, I had wonderful editors who really helped a lot, and it gave me the space to experiment with a lot of different things. There were chapters that were in there originally that aren’t there now, there were things that had been added along the way, of course. Chapters had shifted location.

LB: You mentioned the minimal amount of accounts directly from your father that you had to work with and seeking out other stories from people who had escaped. Did that kind of guide the decision to add the historical fiction elements to the book?

LC: No, from the beginning one of my goals was to share the history. I wanted people to learn about the revolution. So many people have said to me, you know, “I really didn’t know about this.” And so that was a very clear goal of mine, too. To teach a little bit, as much as I could, without it being didactic in that way, to keep it interesting and to make it matter. So to have it tied up in my dad’s story, I hoped it would make it matter more.

LB: I was curious if you ever did any traveling to Hungary for the sake of writing this book, because some of the imagery is so vivid and profound.

LC: So I started writing right about when the pandemic hit. So any plans that I had I wasn’t able to follow through at that time. So no, I did my traveling virtually. And fortunately, there are tons of resources, and I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of Killer Lake, for example, and the mountains there. A lot of time looking at maps, and old family photographs and other things.

LB: Do you think the pandemic kind of guided you a certain way in writing this book? How do you think it would’ve turned out differently had it not happened.

LC: That’s a great question. I don’t know. Maybe that sense of isolation that you picked up on it was partly influenced by the pandemic, I’m not sure. I do think it would be different if I had been able to travel at that time. I’m not sure how it would’ve been different but it would’ve been different.

LB: And were you living in Philadelphia during the pandemic?

LC: So I live in the suburbs, just up the turnpike. So I’m on the edge, I’m in and out of the city all the time. But yeah, I actually grew up here. Moved back here after a little time in New York.

LB: Would you say you’re pretty integrated with Philly’s writing culture, or just the general, like, scene of writers in the city?

LC: I’m working on it. Laughs I’m working on it! Yeah, so to be honest it took me a while to see myself as a serious writer, so to speak. I had a talk yesterday with Autumn Konopka. We read together at Big Blue Marble for the book crawl yesterday. Her debut is about running, and running in Philly. The question came up, “are you a runner?” And she’s like if you run you’re a runner and if you write you’re a writer, you know? But sometimes it’s hard to see yourself that way. So I shied away from the Philly literature scene thinking “oh, I’m not really one of them yet.” 

LB: What’s next for you as a writer? Do you have another book planned? Are you going to take a break?

LC: I wanted to keep the book tight. I wanted to keep in on the smaller side, so there’s a lot of stuff I couldn’t tell. Early on, I had other characters in there, for example some of the more famous freedom fighters. But I decided for several reasons to keep it really just that my dad was the character in all of the chapters. So those are stories I still want to tell, there’s a lot more to that. I also have a project that has to do with vampires and vampire lore. There’s the folklore that’s scattered throughout this one, nothing about vampires in this book but definitely in the next one.

LB: If there’s one thing you want readers to take away from the book or kind of sit with after what would it be?

LC: The first thing that comes to mind is to find those family stories, you know, if you can. I wish I knew my father more. There’s a lot in here that’s rooted in what really happened to him but there’s so much that I don’t know that I wish I did. So if you can, ask. And record.