No.14, July 20, 1998

It is almost impossible to write history nowadays without being accused of anti-Semitism the moment The Word is included. But History it seems cannot live with them, and cannot survive without them.  

They seek them here, they seek them there: now even the world of comic books is suspected of harbouring Revisionists. Abraham Foxman's Anti-Defamation League is among organisations which have formally protested to the publishers of Superman comic strip, two issues of which (Nos. 81 and 82) are running stories on the WW.II Holocaust without even mentioning the word "Jew"--indeed a superhuman feat.

3.

DC Comics admits that it intentionally deleted the word from the books, in which a time-warped Superman and girlfriend Lois Lane visit 1940 Nazi-occupied Poland and "witness" the horrors of Hitler's Holocaust at first hand.

"It was a lapse," said editor-in-chief Jenette Kahn, speaking with the New York Post (Jun. 26). "It was a mistake. I'm sorry."

Superman    Writer Jon Bogdanove, who penned the storyline for "Superman: Man of Steel" admitted to The Jewish Weekly that his bosses at Time-Warner owned (gasp!) DC Comics had ordered the two words, Jews and Jewish, expurgated.

Bogdanove had some difficulty trying to explain Time-Warner's Diktat, saying that they felt the words were "buzz words" which should be avoided.

Thus Superman sees heavily armed Nazis brutally massacring thousands in the Warsaw Ghetto and starving them to death and tossing the bodies into mass graves, and there is talk of Hitler's final solution (not a buzz word?) and genocide (ditto ditto ditto ditto?).

Foxman    The victims have first names like Moishe and Baruch, and are wearing yarmulkes (skullcaps).

Foxman cub, Kenneth Jacobson of the Anti-Defamation League, huffed to the Gotham City, uh, New York, Post that depicting the Holocaust without using the word Jew was outrageous. "It's one more insult to the six million victims of the Holocaust."

4.

German    Myrna Shinbaum, another Foxman spokesman, was inclined to let Superman off the hook. "We don't believe that there was any malice involved," she said (Phew!).

The words German and Catholic are also omitted from the comic strips. Editor Joey Cavalieri was worried that young kids might copy Nazi slurs against Jews from the books and use them against schoolfriends. Cavalieri was excused by Kahn; not being Jewish himself, "he was probably being overly sensitive," she explained.

Spokesman   The easily-offended ADL shrugs in helpless fury. "One can get so locked in, trying not to offend," sighed Jacobson, "[that] you offend".

It's a tough world, and even more so for those who are not cut from the same cloth as Superman.

 COMMENT: The American-born super-hero and Ms. Lane may have to avoid, uh, flying into Germany (and other European countries) in future, in case they are arrested for Volksverhetzung, extradited, tossed into jail without trial and fined twenty thousand dollars -- Germany is one country where you even can be imprisoned, as Udo Walendy knows, not just for words you have written but for those you have left out.

Images © DC Comics