Graphic novel written and illustrated by Joe Kubert. It was published in 2003 by IBooks and later by DC Comics.
Long, long before Joe Kubert was one of the greatest artists and storytellers in comics, before he was acclaimed for his work on Hawkman, Sgt. Rock, Tor, the Viking Prince, and dozens of other characters, before he founded the famed Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, he was a baby born to a Jewish family in Poland. His family had wanted to emigrate to America but were turned down for their visas because his mother was pregnant with him. Two months after he was born, the Kubert family got approval to move to the United States, a good 15 years before World War II.
And decades later, Joe Kubert started wondering, what would've happened if things had turned out differently, if he and his family had never left Poland. And he turned that alternate history into a comic book.
So we meet Yossel, a young teenager with a passion for art. He and his family live in Yzeran, Poland, where his father is a butcher. The family is prosperous and happy -- but the Nazis have already invaded Poland, and tensions are on the rise. But surely the Nazis won't be as prejudiced against Jews in Poland as they have been in Germany, right?
Well, all too quickly, the Kuberts and the rest of the Jews in Poland are sent to the Warsaw Ghetto, a massive block of apartments that are still too small to hold everyone who's been confined there. Things in the ghetto start off bad and get worse and worse. There isn't enough space, there isn't enough food, and no one is allowed to leave. Lots of people die, either of starvation or disease or by being shot by Nazi guards after breaking the rules. But Yossel's artistic skills give him some privileges few others enjoy.
See, the Nazis love his artwork because he specializes in heroic art, and the Nazis like to imagine that he's drawing them. So he's allowed to leave occasionally and he's allowed to bring back a little extra food. He tries to distribute the food to the other residents of the ghetto, but his fellow Jews still resent the fact that their oppressors offer him favors. And one of the favors that Yossel is offered? He is allowed to stay at the ghetto while his family is deported to Auschwitz.
Weeks later, while conditions at the ghetto continue to decline, Yossel meets up with an escapee from Auschwitz, who details the horrors going on in the death camp. And from there, it's decided that the ghetto must fight back -- at first, slowly, killing a Nazi at a time to steal weapons and equipment. Yossel even gets an opportunity to take out a few Nazis on his own. But eventually, as more Jews are executed in the streets or shipped off to the death camps, the time for slow, quiet retribution ends. And when that happens, the Jews in the ghetto are civilians with few guns, and the Nazis are well-armed soldiers. And the end is inevitable for everyone in the Warsaw Ghetto.
This was clearly a deeply personal book for Kubert, who was basically imagining an alternate universe where he and his family were killed by Nazis. There are no great surprises here -- we know what the Nazis did, we know the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising -- but it's still a harrowing account of man's inhumanity to man.
And it's also stunningly beautiful. The book wasn't inked at all -- Kubert decided he preferred the look of his rough pencils over the finished elegance of fully inked artwork. Kubert wanted to make the drawings look like something Yossel would've drawn while observing the events around him, and it does do a lot for giving the story an air of authenticity. It gives the whole book a remarkable and unique look -- rough and sketchy, but also more immediate, urgent, and even intimate. The emotions, body language, everything you see is more raw and painful -- but it's also utterly gorgeous, brilliant work. You'll go back to this over and over to study what Kubert was doing, whether you're an artist yourself or just a fan of Kubert's masterful artwork.
It's a beautiful book about a terrible time, perpetually relevant year after year, created by one of the greatest artisans in comics. If you can track this down, you should find it and read it -- and share it with others.