Art Spigelman, author of the graphic novel Maus, called a "real shame" the decision of some Russian bookstores to stop selling his Pulitzer prize-winning graphic book about the Holocaust because of a Swastika image on it cover.

      Several major bookstores in Moscow have withdrawn copies of Spiegelman’s book – which includes a Swastika on its cover – in an attempt to comply with a law banning Nazi propaganda. The book's removal has also become a part of Russia's attempt to fight any signs of Nazi propaganda ahead of the 70th anniversary of Victory Day, which is celebrated in Russia on May 9.

      “It’s a real shame because this is a book about memory,” Spiegelman told the Guardian. “We don’t want cultures to erase memory.”

      Maus, which won a Pulitzer in 1992 and was published in Russian in 2013, is an anti-fascist narrative about the Holocaust told through the memories of his father, a Polish Jew who moved to the United States. The novel portrays Jews as mice and Germans as cats.

      Russia's furious anti-fascist censorship has already taken a questionably shape in early April 2015, when a toy store in central Moscow received an official police warning for selling a series of figurines depicting famous Nazi soldiers made for collecting.