The Tennessee McMinn county board of education voted unanimously last January, against the wishes of several advisory teachers, to remove the award-winning classic novel Maus from their 8th-grade curriculum. The book, authored by Art Spiegelman, has provided a unique, incisive and disturbing account of the Holocaust to all those who have read it since its publication in 1991.

Written as a cartoon-style illustrated novel, it presents a highly unique perspective of the Holocaust – giving insight into the profound destruction of life it caused. In its illustrations, Jewish people are portrayed as mice and Nazis are portrayed as cats. This cat-mouse dynamic allows the author to demonstrate the relationship and nuance that existed between Nazis and their victims in concentration camps in a unique way incomparable with any other medium.

Art Spiegelman, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, drew narrative empowered through abstracted cartoon illustrations to more effectively communicate the relationship and environment existing for Nazi victims without entering territory too gruesome for readers to comprehend. As there is simply a limited amount of violence that most individuals are able to process before beginning to disconnect and feel numb, photos of war, concentration camps and genocide are among these horrific and haunting scenes that are often too abhorrent for us to genuinely take in and understand. This acute articulation through Spiegelmans illustrations allows the reader to eliminate theological and practical gaps between the imagery depicted and real life events.

A central part of most World War II historical units throughout American high schools, Maus caught the attention of the school board because of its “rough, objectionable language.” Board members discussed their concerns with exposing their students to the illustrated imagery, nudity and cursing in Maus.

Among the school board members' conversation, it became obvious most members were highly out of touch with the piece itself, with one member even initially suggesting it was a third-grade reading level. As Mr. Spiegelman told the New York Times after reading the meeting minutes, it felt as if they were asking “Why can’t they teach a nicer Holocaust?”

Further evidence of this apparent disconnect came in later statements: “It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff, it is not wise or healthy.” These statements show a blatant misunderstanding of what the Holocaust was and the critical importance of teaching an accurate record of history. These educators would prefer to teach a censored, lighter and more palatable story – one that can be taught without feeling uncomfortable or disturbed.

The “happy ending” narrative issue already plagues modern Holocaust depictions and the experiences of those living through concentration camps. One board member's statement in particular fed into this trend: “It was a decent book until the end. I thought the end was stupid to be honest with you…” The member then proceeded to explain how he would teach the Holocaust: “We can tell them exactly what happened, but we don’t need all the nakedness and all the other stuff.”

The desire to clean up the historical record of the Holocaust was brought up again in relation to censoring curse words: “But surely removing the full four letters of a four letter word doesn’t change the intent of the author’s whole book,” another member voiced, “it just cleans it up.” Though the work does indeed contain disturbing imagery, the Holocaust itself was a truly disturbing event in history. Censorship changes the fundamental message conveyed to the reader and draws further away from an accurate depiction of concentration camps.

Censoring, cleaning up or lightening history comes at a high price. The board members were, at some point, confronted with this issue when discussing the extent to which they could censor swearing from the piece without infringing copyright: “I think that they whited out as much as they can from this work without changing the character of the work.” The Holocaust – stripped and censored of death, nudity and cuss words – is no longer the Holocaust. With the recent trends of international antisemitism and domestic authoritarianism, educating the next generation on the veracious nature of the Holocaust is more essential than ever.

Mistakes, when not reflected on, are doomed to be repeated. Thus, it is critical that we expose our next generations to the true history of the Holocaust – even if it is a dark and disturbing one. Understanding and being able to empathize with the suffering felt by the victims is an essential element of our humanity. It is clear from the dialogue between the board members that they were out of touch with Maus and what it represented: a unique and irreplacable perspective on the Holocaust that empowers its readers to understand the horror of the Holocaust in a way no other work does.