This is amazing. As a young woman, Dina Gottliebova Babbit survived the Holocaust, and saved her mother’s life, by painting portraits at the behest of Dr. Josef Mengele. Apparently, Mengele, who was seeking to describe Romany genetic inferiority by documenting their skin colour, was unsatisfied with the quality of the photography at the time, and felt that paintings would be more accurate. He also commissioned her to create paintings depicting his horrific experiments on his victims.
Dina was liberated from Auschwitz and went on to become an assistant animator for MGM and Warner Brothers. Some of her paintings also survived, and are in the possession of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland. The museum won’t relinquish them—reminiscent of all sorts of ill-gotten historical artifacts that end up in museums even though their rightful owners have legitimate claims on them.
Neal Adams, Joe Kubert and Stan Lee have come together to make a 6-page comic that tells Dina’s story. You can read it in PDF form here, and you really should. She’s a truly remarkable woman.
Hat tip: my step-dad, who shares my love of comics.