Among other things, the book, building on the obvious precedent of Art Spiegelman's "Maus," shows how far comics have come as a cultural medium taken seriously here, but also that the Holocaust has come a long way too, as a topic to be freshly considered by a new generation of German teenagers.

The visual style of “The Search” is clear, simple, pastel-colored, in a classic Belgian-Franco comic tradition. “Less is more,” Mr. Heuvel, the artist, said in a recent telephone conversation, acknowledging that he pilfered liberally from Tintin’s inventor, Hergé. “We spent endless hours making sure that the Nazi costumes were kept to a minimum because boys can glorify these things.”

She added: “More and more young German students do too. They are sensitive to the idea that the subject is not just about Germans and Jews. It’s about people and life.”