Spirou in the turmoil of the Shoah, at the Shoah Memorial

WE LIKE: a comic book hero to convey the history of the Holocaust
AGE: for everyone from 7 years old
DATE: until August 30, 2023
OPENING HOURS: every day (except Saturday) from 10 am to 6 pm
DURATION: about 1 hour
FREE: for everyone
PLACE: Shoah Memorial (Paris 4th)

The German occupation of Belgium during the Second World War in comics
For everyone from 7 years old
Free for all

The EXHIBITION “Spirou in the turmoil of the Shoah“

The exhibition “Spirou in the turmoil of the Shoah” is based on Emile Bravo’s comic book series “Spirou, l’espoir malgré tout”, a work that delivers a child’s testimony to the horrors of war
The Shoah Memorial presents the comic strips and many fascinating archival documents on the life of the newspaper during the war and the period of occupation in Belgium
The famous bellboy Spirou and his friend Fantasio are immersed in Nazi-occupied Belgium. Through the story told by the comic strip, we discover the consequences of fanaticism and hatred.
Without any emphasis, Émile Bravo captivates and succeeds in his mission: to make it clear that to be a hero, it is not necessarily necessary to have fought with a weapon and killed one’s enemy. It is a question of being a humanist, of course, but above all of “knowing why one is one. That’s basically what Hope is all about.”
In one of Spirou’s albums, Spirou and Fantasio meet Félix Nussbaum and his wife Felka, German Jewish painters who hid for part of the war but ended up being deported and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944
The strength of this comic is the historical rigor of the story. Also, through the confrontation of the plates of Émile Bravo’s Spirou with archival documents, visitors learn a lot about the occupation in Belgium, the administration, and daily life during the Second World War