Copies Of 'Maus' Banned Holocaust Novel Donated To Tucson Schools

TUCSON, AZ — Tucson public high schools will soon be getting copies of "Maus," a graphic novel about the Holocaust that was recently in the national news after it was removed from the curriculum of a Tennessee school district.

Tucson City Council member Paul Cunningham last week announced his plans to donate 10 copies of "Maus" and its sequel "Maus II" to Tucson Unified high schools.

“Maus tells the story of the Holocaust in an accessible way,” Cunningham said in a news release. “It’s important for young people to be able to have the opportunity to read these books.”

Officials from Tucson Unified declined to comment on the donation, but said that "Maus" is not banned within the district.

"Maus" follows the struggles of the author's parents and their survival of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

In the novel, by Art Spiegelman, Jewish people are portrayed as mice and Nazis are portrayed as cats. The book earned Spiegelman a Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

The McMinn County School Board voted unanimously earlier this month to remove "Maus" from its curriculum, and to replace it with something else, according to a report from NPR.

The board made the decision based on eight curse words used in the book and the depiction of a partially naked woman during a scene detailing the suicide of Spiegelman's mother.

“If there are people who find parts of it objectionable, I don’t know what to tell them,” Cunningham said in the release. “It’s a telling of the biggest atrocity of the 20th century. It isn’t a bedtime story to make people feel comfortable.”

The author himself told Der Spiegel, Germany's largest news website, that he figured the board's decision wasn't really about foul language, saying that most 8th graders likely know words far worse than the ones used in the book.

"It's just misguided and ignorant," Spiegelman told Der Spiegel of the board's decision. "But there must be something far more malevolent to this agenda, because this sounds insane...I think they were genuinely shocked by such a clear imagery of the Holocaust."

Cunningham, a middle school teacher, noted that he read "Maus" for a course he took on the Holocaust when he was a student at University of Arizona.

“I met dozens of Holocaust survivors over the years; they entrusted my generation to never forget,” he said. “I promised them I wouldn't. I am keeping that promise.”