David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies: Welcome

August 01, 2010

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Wyman Institute Update: January 4, 2004

Welcome to the newest member of the Wyman Institute's Arts & Letters Council:

Joe Kubert is one of the legends of the world of comic book art and illustration. In his more than sixty years with the medium, he has produced countless stories for countless characters, including DC Comics' Hawkman, Tarzan, Enemy Ace, Batman and the Flash. He edited, wrote and illustrated the DC title Sgt Rock for thirty years. Kubert was also one of the first authors to adapt the long-form version of comics that became known as graphic novels, these works include a graphic novel of Tor, the historical adventures of Abraham Stone, and the real-life story 'Fax From Sarajevo'.

Since its publication in October 2003, Kubert's latest work, 'Yossel: April 19, 1943', has received numerous accolades. It is the story of a fifteen-year-old boy who, in another time and place, could have grown to be a great artist. But in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II, Yossel, a Jew, is an untermensch and thus has no rights, and no future. When the Germans confiscate his family's home and force them to live in the overcrowded tenements of the Warsaw ghetto, it appears that Yossel's artistic gift will be shattered. Instead, the awful suffering of his family, the terrible conditions of the ghetto, and the increasingly barbaric treatment of the Jews drive him to bear witness through his art.

Joe Kubert founded the first and only accredited school devoted solely to the art of cartoon graphics. The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc. in Dover, New Jersey, has since its establishment in 1976 produced many of today's leading cartoonists. Currently, Kubert is producing PS Magazine for the U.S. Army and working on a graphic novel about gangsters in Brooklyn's East New York in the 1930s in addition to teaching and running correspondence courses (see www.kubertsworld.com). Joe Kubert and his wife, Muriel, live in New Jersey. Two of their five children, Adam and Andy, have achieved great notoriety as comic-book artists.
The Wyman Institute's year-end report on Holocaust denial activity around the world, coauthored by Academic Council member Dr. Alex Grobman and Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff, has received considerable media attention. United Press International's article on the report may be viewed at:

http://www.wiesenthal.com/social/press/pr_item.cfm?ItemID=8696

To see the full text of the report itself, go to: www.WymanInstitute.org
Academic Council member Prof. Myrna Goldenberg presented a paper on Holocaust poetry at the annual Association of Jewish Studies meeting in Boston. (The paper was titled "Identity, Memory, and Authority: An Introduction to Holocaust Poems by Dori Katz, Myra Sklarew, and Hilary Tham.") Upon Prof. Goldenberg's recent retirement, Montgomery College (MD) established the Myrna Goldenberg Women's Studies Research Collection in her honor. Earlier, the College established the Myrna Goldenberg Scholarship in Women's Studies.
Arts & Letters Council member Michael Moorcock is completing 'The Vengeance of Rome', the last in his series of novels dealing with the social climate in the Western world and the Middle East which helped make the Nazi Holocaust possible. The book will be published by the British firm of Jonathan Cape, UK, later this year.
Academic Council member Prof. Steven L. Jacobs (University of Alabama) has co-authored (with Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center) a new book, 'Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' just published by Ktav.