Four colour anti-fascism: postwar narratives and the obfuscation of the Holocaust in East German comics

Abstract

ABSTRACTFoundational narratives of the German Democratic Republic as an anti-fascist state subsumed accounts of Jewish suffering and victimization before and during the Second World War. Though there was little or no outright denial of the Holocaust, this was instead expressed in terms of Marxist class conflict that valorized socialist resistance and the construction of socialism as a bulwark against future western imperialism. This article examines children’s comics published in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Because of shifting Cold War relations, it was necessary that these socialist comics foreground narratives of the war and Holocaust as episodes of anti-fascist resistance to educate children and develop their awareness of socialist class struggle in the face of increasing western influence. These narratives demonstrated socialist experience in a vacuum, undermining the recognition of Jewish claims to victimhood and of (East) German perpetration to buttress the future of the socialist state through children’s education in comics.