(gentle music) - This booklet, "America and the Holocaust," I can't call it a comic book because it's not funny and I can't call it a graphic novel because a novel is not true and everything in this is true.

(gentle music continues) This is something now that I really wanted to do for high school students and junior high school students.

It's the way to reach young people, and that's what our goal has always been.

- I considered it one of the challenges of a lifetime that wetted my appetite.

A lot of narrative challenges, a lot of editing challenges, and a lot of drawing challenges.

- I have been teaching about the United States and the Holocaust for over 30 years.

I teach college students and clearly it's important, that's essential, but I wanted to reach a younger generation, and I was hoping that this might be helpful to teachers who were struggling with the whole notion of how do you teach the Holocaust.

This is a way to introduce it that might be more relevant and exciting for younger people.

- Barbara approached the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators website.

She also talked to one of our members about who might be good for this assignment.

I recommended four or five people.

And a couple days later she called me back and said, "I want to use you."

- I came up with the idea that why don't we have two young people actually discussing events from various perspectives, raising questions, the way you might do in a classroom.

- [Girl] I'm wondering if the US is even going to protest against this and maybe not even go to the games.

- [Boy] If we go, Hitler will make a lot of money with all the tourists and athletes being there and other countries will follow our lead and go too.

- [Barbara] Fred was able to really bring that to life with real students who had been interviewed and who expressed their feelings.

- And I had one set of students, Omar and Ava, and I shot phone photos of them reading through the script.

They were perfect models.

- [Girl] Hitler is arresting all opposition, he's pretending to be a savior.

- [Boy] Are people really falling for all his lies?

- The challenge from a design standpoint was making these kind of two directions work, not just the history and the presentation and maps and personalities, but also the fact that the high school students are raising issues at the time they're happening and getting the reader to encounter these ethical issues.

- A study of the Holocaust raises very relevant issues today.

I want young people to think about what their political leaders are saying.

I want them to think about, could it happen now?

This was a book that came out in the 1930s written by Sinclair Lewis, and the title was "It Can't Happen Here" and the point was that it could happen here in America.

That's a wake-up call.

Most people don't know anything about Henry Ford, they think of him as an American icon.

But he was a raving anti-Semite, and that's that's shocking for these young people to find out.

The whole issue of immigration is another one.

Clearly it was a major issue then with the refugees desperately trying to get into this country, get out of Germany.

As we look at our society today, we see that democracy is fragile.

Bigotry, racism, antisemitism.

Young people have to stand up to that kind of stuff.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music ends)