Graphic Novel of Eva Deutsch

Horatiu Suciu and his 10th grade class from Lugoj, a small town in Romania created a graphic novel based on the Centropa interview with Eva Deutsch, a Romanian Jew who tells the story of her childhood, surviving Auschwitz and starting over after the Second World War.

The project took almost a year because the students and their teacher had to read the 40-page biography, in English, and take out the essential parts based on the questions: What is important? How do we tell the story? How can we adapt Centropa's method of telling a story? What should the students learn about Romanian Jewish history and the Holocaust?

As a result, this project became more than only a Holocaust-lesson for the students. They learned about history by drawing and researching the past of their own country. This can be illustrated by the following example: In one of the drawings, a radio is featured. Initially the students drew a radio as they knew it from home, a big stereo system with many speakers which wasn't historically accurate. So they had to learn about the radio and it's appearances in the 1930's, thus also learning about technology in history.

 

Links to Horatiu Suciu's entries about the project on Centropa's Teacher Blog: