second generation-Michel Kichka

Michel Kichka, second generation, Israel Argol-Modan 1997, 105 pp

Age:15 and up
Rating: 4/5

The father of Michelle Kischka never talked about his family - what remains of them was few photos, which little Michelle used to watch them and crying. This is how this touching autobiography and graphic book that were done by Michel Kichka start. Kischka describes with funny paintings, with a clear and confident line, his childhood as “second generation” to Holocaust parent's survivors. His father was in the camps, his mother fled with her family to Switzerland, his brothers and sisters grew up in boarding schools far away from his one. Which are both a memoir and an opportunity to settle accounts with his father. There are many shocking passages in the book - the little Michelle's dreams about the extermination camps and the survivors stories of his father on the death marches, the attitude of parents to him and his brother, Michel felt duty to please his father and to be excel in everything because his father wish is to show Hitler that he won after all, and the tragedy that happened his family several years ago. This tragedy caused the father to open up and start talking about the horrors of the Holocaust, to family, to the school children on tours in Poland and to all who would listen.

Michel Kischka found the courage after many years and decided to deal with the past of his father and family. Naturally choose to do so is by illustrations, but for the first time in his life he also wrote, and this connection is created a unique graphic novel on the Holocaust. Shocking part very softened with illustrations and sometimes uses black humor, which helped to tell his story. For example, he paints 20 characters terrifying inmates to illustrate how he wanted to find his father in pictures in books about the Holocaust, he and his brothers in family picture happy, when their thoughts are written in balloons above them express the opposite of happens, and his father introduces his diploma before Hitler, that his son is his revenge on Hitler. The paintings tell things that are not labeled and together its make full story with overt and covert levels.

Kischka was inspired by the groundbreaking book “Maus" by Art Spiegelman's, this book was first comics’ book that won the Pulitzer Prize.

Although this is a graphic novel that writes with humor the autobiographical story of Kischka is a hard and important story, its help to understand also for young adults what happened in the Holocaust, how people that survive living with the memories and the pain. Read it with your children speak with them about the holocaust and explain them why “Never no more” why we as humans can't allow it to happen to any nation.