6 | FEBRUARY 24 • 2022 1942 - 2022 Covering and Connecting Jewish Detroit Every Week To make a donation to the DETROIT JEWISH NEWS FOUNDATION go to the website www.djnfoundation.org The Detroit Jewish News (USPS 275-520) is published every Thursday at 32255 Northwestern Highway, #205, Farmington Hills, Michigan. Periodical postage paid at Southfield, Michigan, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send changes to: Detroit Jewish News, 32255 Northwestern Highway, #205, Farmington Hills, Michigan 48334 MISSION STATEMENT The Detroit Jewish News will be of service to the Jewish community. The Detroit Jewish News will inform and educate the Jewish and general community to preserve, protect and sustain the Jewish people of greater Detroit and beyond, and the State of Israel. 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Suite 205, Farmington Hills, MI 48334 248-354-6060 thejewishnews.com Publisher The Detroit Jewish News Foundation | Board of Directors: Chair: Gary Torgow Vice President: David Kramer Secretary: Robin Axelrod Treasurer: Max Berlin Board members: Larry Jackier, Jeffrey Schlussel, Mark Zausmer Senior Advisor to the Board: Mark Davidoff Alene and Graham Landau Archivist Chair: Mike Smith Founding President & Publisher Emeritus: Arthur Horwitz Founding Publisher Philip Slomovitz, of blessed memory | Editorial DIrector of Editorial: Jackie Headapohl jheadapohl@thejewishnews.com Associate Editor: Rachel Sweet rsweet@thejewishnews.com Associate Editor: David Sachs dsachs@thejewishnews.com Social Media and Digital Producer: Nathan Vicar nvicar@thejewishnews.com Staff Reporter: Danny Schwartz dschwartz@thejewishnews.com Editorial Assistant: Sy Manello smanello@thejewishnews.com Contributing Writers: Nate Bloom, Rochel Burstyn, Suzanne Chessler, Annabel Cohen, Keri Guten Cohen, Shari S. Cohen, Shelli Liebman Dorfman, Louis Finkelman, Stacy Gittleman, Esther Allweiss Ingber, Barbara Lewis, Jennifer Lovy, Rabbi Jason Miller, Alan Muskovitz, Robin Schwartz, Mike Smith, Steve Stein, Julie Smith Yolles, Ashley Zlatopolsky | Advertising Sales Director of Advertising: Keith Farber kfarber@thejewishnews.com Senior Account Executive: Kathy Harvey-Mitton kmitton@thejewishnews.com | Business Office Director of Operations: Amy Gill agill@thejewishnews.com Operations Manager: Andrea Gusho agusho@thejewishnews.com Operations Assistant: Ashlee Szabo Circulation: Danielle Smith Billing Coordinator: Pamela Turner | Production By Farago & Associates Manager: Scott Drzewiecki Designers: Kelly Kosek, Kaitlyn Schoen, Deborah Schultz, Michelle Sheridan essay Misrepresenting Maus W hat a story greeting readers of the New York Times on Jan. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Jenny Gross’s report on a sad spectacle transpiring at a school board meeting in McCinn County, Tennessee. Proving that foolishness loves company, the board’s 10 members had voted unanimously to remove Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale from the district’s eighth-grade curriculum. Their reasons for this action ranged from the specious — PG-13 cartoon nudity and some mild swear words — to the grotesquely obtuse: Spiegelman’s daring to depict the deaths of a handful of the millions murdered during the Holocaust. “It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids,” said one board member at the meeting: “Why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff?” Of course, the internet blew up in response, as evidenced by the emails, newsfeeds and Facebook posts filling my screens. Statements from the Anti-Defamation League and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum were issued, and comments were solicited from Spiegelman. The usually loquacious Pulitzer Prize-winner was almost at a loss for words, underscoring the staggering nature of the entire affair. Because I research, write and teach about the Holocaust, I was as outraged as any of my colleagues in the field; but the English professor in me was also dismayed by the language used to label Spiegelman’s ground-breaking text. The Times piece is titled “School board in Tennessee Bans Teaching of Holocaust Novel Maus.” Prompted by this report and continuing across the virtual media landscape, Spiegelman’s haunting and original memoir has been persistently mislabeled as a fiction, a novel. And the editors of the “newspaper of record” did not bother to review their own record with this issue. They have been taken to task before. NOT A WORK OF FICTION In December 1991, when the second volume of Maus reached the lofty heights of the best seller list, Times editors placed it among best-selling fiction, occasioning a memorable letter from the author. “The borderland between fiction and nonfiction has been fertile territory for some of the most potent contemporary writing,” Spiegelman admitted; but he soon explicated his objection: “It’s just that I shudder to think how David Duke — if he could read — would respond to seeing a carefully researched work based closely on my father’s memories of life in Hitler’s Europe and in the death camps classified as fiction.” Despite all the justifiable outrage aimed at the McCinn County school board and the amazing blowback it provoked — in a PURELY COMMENTARY Robert Franciosi Grand Valley State University continued on page 9