Maus Removed From Russian Bookstores

By Dianna Dilworth 

To celebrate the Victory Day, a remembrance of the Soviet Union’s defeat over the Nazis in World War II, the Russian government has pushed to remove all swastikas from the country.

Bookstores have been removing titles which include the symbol from bookshelves. Unfortunately, “Maus,” the Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman that depicts a Jewish family during the Holocaust has also been removed since it features a swastika on the cover.

The New York Times has the scoop:

…with concern over the dangers of fascism in Russia on the rise, the booksellers appeared to decide it was better to be safe than sorry.

“They just got scared that someone would see the swastika on the cover,” said Varvara Gornostaeva, the chief editor of Corpus, the publishing house that released the Russian-language edition of the graphic novel more than a year ago. “But the swastika there is just a caricature. It does not fall afoul of the law banning fascist symbols.”