Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Doctor Seuss and the Holocaust in France



Doctor Seuss and the Holocaust in France shows that the cartoonist was ahead of the curve in his 70 year old editorial cartoon above portraying Hitler and Vichy leader Pierre Laval singing happily, while the forest in the background is full of hanging corpses with "Jew" signs on each of them. The cartoon is courtesy The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

Rafael Medoff writes for the Jewish Journal:

The brutal details of the roundup process were amply reported in the American press. The New York Times described the “scenes of terror and despair” in the streets of Paris, including suicides, Jewish patients dragged violently from hospital beds, and children violently separated from their parents. Unfortunately, the article was relegated to page 16.

Theodor Geisel, who drew editorial cartoons for PM under the pen name “Dr. Seuss,” was outraged by the news from France and decided to use his cartooning skills to help publicize the plight of the Jews.

The entire article is here.




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