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S39E3: Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse | Clip

Art Spiegelman interpreted the Holocaust from a child’s perspective

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Art Spiegelman’s “Li’l Pitcher” comic depicts a young boy who learns about the horrors of the Holocaust while listening to his parents’ conversation during a car ride.

TRANSCRIPT

- Piles isn't the same thing as archiving, (chuckles) I've now discovered.

I grew up with just shards of information.

There's such a thing as Hitler and there's such a thing as World War II and there were concentration camps and somehow my parents were in them.

They had these numbers on their arms, and my father would wake up screaming often.

Yet I didn't have a context for all this.

"Li'l Pitcher."

- Washington Heights, New York City, a hired car ride home, circa 1954.

- Those little V's represent translated text was showing that the characters were speaking Polish.

- What a fancy affair!

Everybody was invited, even Janek.

- Yes, but nobody would sit near him.

- My parents always spoke Polish to each other.

- Brr, poor guy.

- Huh, who's Janek?

- So, the pitcher with a big ear is listening.

- Why don't people sit with him?

- In Auschwitz, he was a sonderkommando.

He threw Jews into the oven.

- Why?

- If not, the Germans will throw him in the ovens.

- So it wasn't his fault, right?

- Yeah, but it's rumors he put to the ovens his wife and his son.

So nobody wants to sit.

- Take a nap again, Cookie.

It's still a long drive and we're just having grownup talk.