The Holocaust, Other Than Representation

“To attempt to represent Auschwitz in language – to reduce the degradation, death, and stench to a concept – drowns out the screams…it is therefore necessary that the Holocaust remains immemorial – that it remains that which cannot be remembered – but also that which cannot be forgotten. Thus, any art attempting to represent the Holocaust should continue to haunt us with its inability to represent the unrepresentable, to say the unsayable. It should continue to haunt us with the feeling that there is something Other than representation.” – Jim Powell, Postmodernism for Beginners

 

Reading this quote from Jim Powell’s novel, I agree with the point he makes. The Holocaust is inarguably the most abhorrent and inhumane event to occur in history, and thus cannot simply be composed into a series of pages. The genocide of millions of Jews across Europe, and the torture they endured leading up to their murders, are unfathomable to those who did not witness this nightmare.  As a result, one cannot depict this shameful event through language, but rather through various forms of art. In order for people to begin to grasp an idea of the brutalities the “undesirables” faced, it is more impactful to pictorially present this subject. Like the old cliché, a picture is worth a thousand words, and art has the ability to move people emotionally in ways that writing cannot to “say the unsayable” (Powell). Powell’s point is proven through the graphic novel Maus, in which Art Spiegelman shares his father’s Holocaust survival story in a nonconventional way – a comic book. Spiegelman utilizes illustrations to discuss what his father suffered in Auschwitz and leave readers appalled, wanting to know more. The piece’s self-conscious manner exemplifies the fact that we will never be able to understand what happened in Auschwitz, even if our relatives went through it, unless we endure the conditions ourselves. Rather than plainly state what occurred, Spiegelman describes his father’s very personal story while exploring the relationship between Auschwitz and how it impacts his own life. Thus, Art Spiegelman is able to impose the feeling that “there is something other than representation” in his piece, making it a truly successful Holocaust narrative (Powell).