A Tennessee school district banned the use of the graphic novel
Maus,
a literary masterpiece about the Holocaust against the Jewish people in Nazi Germany, in its high school classes, citing the use of blasphemous words and nudity (despite the fact that its protagonists are mice).
In a unanimous 10-0 vote, the McMinn County School Board (population 55,000, and which includes the city of Athens) decided that American artist Art Spiegelman's book will not be used as part of the curriculum because it says it has images and language inappropriate for eighth graders (about 13 years old), reports The Washington Post.
The concern of those who censor the work, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, focuses on the harsh words it uses and the drawings of naked bodies that portray how Jewish people were forced to be without clothes when entering Nazi concentration camps. to be exterminated with poison gas.
Art Spiegelman poses at an exhibition in Paris in 2012.Bertrand Langlois/AFP via Getty Images
Mike Cochran, a board member who vetoed the graphic novel, said he had read it, liked it, but found parts of it "
completely unnecessary
".
According to minutes of the meeting, Cochran referred, above all, to the vignettes in which the father of the novel - who represents Spiegelman's father - talks with his son about losing his virginity, and another in which a woman it is cut with a blade.
The school board assured that its decision was not influenced by the subject of the book, but it activated a debate about what should or should not be taught in schools that becomes more heated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day is celebrated this Thursday.
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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a statement that
Maus
has been vital in educating students about this historical topic through the
detailed experiences of the victims.
"Books like
Maus
can inspire students to think critically about the past," the institution said.
Filmmaker Rebekah McKendry called the book ban "shameful" and said
Maus
was the "most detailed" account of the Holocaust she had ever read.
"Are the words [in the book] objectionable? Yes," opined Julie Goodin, a former history teacher, "but that's how
Spiegelman wanted to convey the horror.
There's nothing pretty about the Holocaust."
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Asked about this censorship, Spiegelman sent in response to The Daily Beast portal a bookmark he had designed with the phrase: "
Keep your nose in a book
And keep the noses of others out of the books you decide to stick your nose in! ".