BAMBINI CONTRO I MURI. L’INFANZIA INFRANTA DELLA SHOAH TRA ROMANZO, CINEMA E GRAPHIC NOVEL

The essay aims to retrace the image of childhood violated by
dictatorships. It does this by working on a historical-literary-cinematographic
vector filtered by a pedagogical lens that, in the sense
of a pedagogy of history and narration, intends to assume the educational “precipitate” of tragic events (Gennari, 2016) to return indelible
teachings. Two different and similar books – The pianist of
Wladyslaw Szpilman and Maus by Art Spiegelman – are united by
a terrible image; by a tragic testimony: children killed by Nazi soldiers
only because they were surprised in the street, because part
of a “human subset” to be eliminated with unprecedented brutality.
The two authors report, through narrations entrusted to written
page and illustration, the chilling practice of the suppression of
small children against the walls; slammed violently to stifle tears
and laments; almost macabre game; perverse gear of a wider, mechanical
and terrible genocide.