Art Spiegelman Recalls Cartoonists' Reaction to the Denial of Jewish-Refugee Ship

By: E&P Staff Cartoonist Art Spiegelman, best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel "Maus," offers a retrospective on The Washington Post's Web site today. He recounts how American political cartoonists reacted 70 years ago to America's denial of safe harbor to the St. Louis, a refugee ship carrying more than 900 Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.

The Roosevelt administration?s refusal to allow those refugees to enter U.S. shores has come to symbolize America?s indifference to the Nazi genocide, Spiegelman writes: ?Most cartoonists ? like most other people ? just had a failure of moral imagination ... of empathy.?

Cartoons by Herblock, Jerry Doyle, Fred Packer and others are highlighted, each offering a vastly differentake on a sad day in American history.

Check it out, here.