Der "St. Louis Flüchtlingsschiff Blues": zur Verarbeitung von Holocaust und Kriegsgräueln im Comic

Abstract

American comic artist Art Spiegelman, whose parents survived the Holocaust, has made the odyssey of the ship St. Louis some seventy years ago the topic of his latest work. The commanders of the Hapag motor vessel attempted in vain to let more than nine-hundred Jewish emigrants from Germany go on land in Cuba. When the Cuban authorities declined to recognize their visas, the captain of the St. Louis tried to bring the passengers to safety in the U.S., but President Roosevelt refused them entry. Spiegelman took a number of contemporary American caricatures as a point of departure for his retelling of the tragedy in the form of a large-scale comic drawing, supplemented with his comments on the Americans’ refusal to offer refuge.