Joanna Rubin Dranger’s graphic memoir Keep in mind Us to Life combines private reflection, archival analysis, images and different ephemera, oral historical past, and different types of analysis and storytelling, and the result’s a sobering, gorgeous chronicle of her Jewish household previous and current. She units out not solely to file her household’s migration from Poland and Russia to Sweden, but additionally to get better the names and tales of relations who had been misplaced within the Holocaust. She wrestles with the duties of remembering, particularly in a world the place antisemitism, racism, and different types of hate nonetheless run rampant.

Joanna has been awarded the Stora Svenska Illustrator Prize, the Swedish Collection Academy’s Adamson statuette, and the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. She was the primary feminine professor of illustration at Konstfack College of Arts, Crafts, and Design. She lives in Stockholm along with her husband and three kids. I had the chance to attach along with her by electronic mail to study extra about her writing course of and analysis, and the way books like hers may help foster empathy and connection.

Hillary Moses Mohaupt: Thanks a lot for this guide, which actually places to make use of the strengths of its kind as a graphic memoir. Your drawings help you insert the voices and pictures of your loved ones members, in addition to illustrations and copies of newspaper articles and different archival documentation. The guide brings individuals to life. We see their faces, hear their voices, and skim how newspapers first reported on the pogroms, raids, and systematic lack of rights and life. Are you able to discuss slightly bit concerning the energy of graphic kinds for memoir?

Joanna Rubin Dranger: I personally love the graphic memoir and the graphic novel format — it’s a novel storytelling language that permits for the seamless mixture of pictures and textual content, making it notably effectively suited to conveying complicated narratives. The facility of pictures is that they’ll talk feelings and nuances that phrases alone typically can not. Some visuals are direct and putting, able to expressing difficult feelings straight away.

In Keep in mind Us to Life, sure pictures wanted to be precise images of artifacts—just like the Swedish Nazi registry playing cards documenting Jews, which had been found hidden behind a wall after the warfare. These historic traces carry a weight that solely an actual {photograph} can convey.

On the similar time, illustrations permit me to create connections and contrasts inside the story. For instance, a small Polish Jewish little one launched earlier within the guide later reappears, juxtaposed with a passage about how the Swedish press was virtually unanimous in its opposition to accepting 500 Polish Jewish kids. These kids had been seen as “Jap Jews” and had been deemed a possible risk, with claims that their presence might provoke antisemitism in Sweden. This interaction between visible storytelling and historic documentation enhances the emotional impression, making the previous each quick and private.

HMM: Your guide is such a phenomenal witness of your loved ones’s life earlier than, throughout, and after the Holocaust, and it additionally presents an vital narrative concerning the impacts of antisemitism and hate carried out at a catastrophic scale. How did you put together your self to jot down this guide? 

JRD: Once I first started engaged on this guide, I had no clear sense of the place it could lead. I really began with what I believed to be a surprisingly constructive story — my grandmother’s mother and father’ immigration to Sweden in 1906 after fleeing violent pogroms in Białystok. They settled within the southern Swedish countryside, constructed a affluent life, and in our household their story had at all times been instructed virtually like a love story between my grandmother’s household and Sweden.

However as I delved deeper, I started to comprehend there have been lacking items, unanswered questions—and lacking individuals! There have been gaps within the narrative and kinfolk nobody had spoken about. As soon as I began looking for solutions, I couldn’t cease. Each clue led to a different, revealing hidden histories and forgotten lives. This guide will not be solely an exploration of my circle of relatives’s previous but additionally a bigger story about Jewish lives and about Sweden’s position through the warfare, about silence, reminiscence, and the shadows of antisemitism.

HMM: You chronicle a number of the analysis on this guide, each archival and oral histories, within the guide itself, and the emotional stress concerned with evaluating and verifying your loved ones tales, whenever you knew them, with data at locations like Yad Vashem. Are you able to share a bit about your analysis course of?

JRD: The analysis course of was each deeply rewarding and emotionally exhausting. I began with what I assumed I knew—household tales, photographs, recorded interviews, anecdotes, and scattered items of knowledge handed down by generations. However I rapidly realized that there have been gaps, contradictions, and, most painfully, forgotten names.

Archival analysis grew to become an important a part of my journey. I searched data at locations like Yad Vashem, the USA Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Swedish archives, cross-referencing data to confirm particulars. Typically I’d observe lengthy analysis paths solely to search out no solutions in any respect; different occasions, I uncovered information that utterly reshaped my understanding of my household’s previous.

Digitization has remodeled this type of analysis. The huge on-line archives of Yad Vashem, for instance, allowed me to entry paperwork that, prior to now, would have required touring internationally to search out. With the ability to search by title, place, or perhaps a fragment of knowledge enabled me to piece collectively connections in ways in which would have been unthinkable only a few a long time in the past. Nonetheless, researching Jewish kinfolk usually comes with further challenges, particularly attributable to variations in spelling and transliterations from Yiddish, Hebrew, or different languages into English and different alphabets.

Oral historical past was simply as vital. Talking with kinfolk was transformative. Typically, it wasn’t that the data had been misplaced—it was merely that nobody had ever requested the questions earlier than. Different occasions, my questions triggered reminiscences or prompted somebody to lastly retrieve a long-forgotten field of images or paperwork. Probably the most emotional moments in my analysis was discovering two albums full of images of my grandfather’s household—individuals I had beforehand solely identified from a single blurry picture. Instantly, they got here alive.

We additionally know extra at this time than we’ve got earlier than. There may be now a wealth of knowledge obtainable about Sweden’s actions through the warfare. Within the bibliography of my guide, one can see that many vital books and movies have been launched prior to now 20 years, shedding new gentle on this historical past that has been hidden or downplayed.

In the end, the analysis course of strengthened for me how fragile reminiscence will be — but additionally how highly effective it’s. The extra I uncovered, the extra I noticed how historical past isn’t simply one thing prior to now. It lives within the current, shaping identities and influencing how we perceive ourselves and our place on the earth.

HMM: In a single part of the guide, you recount going to a affirmation class as a toddler and share an antisemitic incident with the priest. You describe this incident as being a gateway to understanding your individual Jewish id, your “in-betweenness.” You write, “In contrast to containers, identities will be as spacious as you want.” How do you assume a guide like yours may assist readers navigate “in-betweenness” and maybe perceive their very own identities slightly bit higher?

JRD: For the reason that guide was printed in Sweden and Norway, I’ve been deeply moved by the responses from readers who’ve reached out to share what it means to them. Many specific a robust connection to the sensation of “in-betweenness.”

It’s extremely highly effective to see your individual expertise mirrored in artwork and literature. When one thing you’ve at all times felt however by no means had the phrases to articulate is abruptly made seen, it turns into actual, validated, and half of a bigger narrative. Recognition is important—it helps us perceive ourselves and makes us really feel each empowered and fewer alone.

HMM: There’s a piece in your guide known as “The Household That Disappeared,” and it’s, for essentially the most half, a dialogue between you and your mom’s cousin, Azriela, concerning the individuals in your grandfather’s household, beforehand unknown to you, who had been misplaced within the Holocaust. It’s a pivotal dialog within the guide, as a result of it permits your loved ones’s previous to really feel very current and fashionable in a method it had not earlier than.

This revelation, in flip, spurs you (and me, the reader) to surprise (and grieve) that it may very well be attainable that the Holocaust might have occurred within the twentieth century, not very way back in any respect. Did penning this guide change how you concentrate on the previous and its impression on the current and the long run?

JRD: Earlier than I started this journey, historical past — particularly my circle of relatives’s historical past — felt considerably distant, like one thing that had occurred way back and was already settled. However as I uncovered tales, spoke with kinfolk, and pieced collectively fragments of lives that had been misplaced, I started to know how deeply the previous lingers, shaping identities, relationships, and the best way we understand the world at this time.

My assembly with Azriela was a turning level. Earlier than, I had solely seen a couple of blurry previous images of my grandfather’s household—individuals who had been known as “disappeared.” However now, seeing two full albums full of images the place they had been very a lot alive, residing fashionable life to the fullest, made the Holocaust really feel frighteningly shut. It was not only a historic occasion however one thing deeply private, that had immediately formed my household.

The conclusion that complete branches of my household tree had been erased by the Nazis, after which forgotten by us, their very own kinfolk, was overwhelming.

What struck me most was how the pictures captured them—completely happy, effectively dressed, fashionable, surrounded by colleagues, family and friends. Ice-skating. Snowboarding. Rowing boats with buddies. Having picnics. It made me acutely conscious that those that had been lowered to a phrase—”disappeared”—had as soon as been as alive as I’m at this time.

This analysis additionally deepened my consciousness of how historical past repeats itself. The mechanisms that led to the Holocaust—othering, scapegoating, dehumanization, racism and antisemitism—didn’t vanish with the top of World Warfare II. They’re nonetheless at work at this time. That’s why remembering, telling these tales, and fascinating with historical past is not only about honoring the previous; it’s about understanding the current and safeguarding the long run.

HMM: You point out briefly originally of this guide the idea of tikkun olam (repairing the world). Do you assume a guide like yours will be a part of repairing the world?

JRD: Sure, I do imagine books can play a task in repairing the world. Tales have the ability to foster understanding, problem prejudices, and make clear histories that should not be forgotten. In writing Keep in mind Us to Life, I wished to convey each my household’s previous and the broader historical past of Jewish life in Sweden and past to the forefront—not solely as an act of remembrance but additionally as a option to spark reflection and dialog. If my guide creates area for empathy and helps even one individual see the previous and current extra clearly, query injustice, or really feel much less alone in their very own story, then it has, in its personal small method, contributed to tikkun olam.

HMM: In direction of the top of the guide, there’s an alternate between you and your husband about whether or not anybody will need or be capable of learn this guide. Who do you hope reads it?

JRD: I hope everybody reads it. 🙂 Apparently, the pages the place I specific my doubts about whether or not anybody would wish to learn this guide had an sudden and shifting impact: readers felt compelled to reply. I’ve obtained numerous letters, postcards, emails, and messages on social media from individuals sharing how profoundly the guide affected them.

HMM: What recommendation do you have got for different writers who’re contemplating writing a guide that fuses each historical past and memoir?

JRD: Writing a guide that blends historical past and memoir is each a duty and a problem. My essential recommendation is to be rigorous in your analysis — fact-check all the pieces, particularly when coping with delicate historic occasions just like the Holocaust. Accuracy is important, not solely to honor the reality but additionally as a result of there’ll at all times be those that search to distort or undermine it. I had the invaluable assist of Sweden’s main historian on the Holocaust, who reviewed the Swedish version of Keep in mind Us to Life. Having consultants confirm your work not solely strengthens its credibility but additionally supplies reassurance that you’re presenting historical past as precisely as attainable.

It’s additionally vital to be conscious of the individuals whose tales you’re telling. My household supported my analysis, which undoubtedly made the method simpler.

I used to be struck by how my questions — and typically returning with new or totally different ones — introduced again reminiscences and led to new discoveries. Typically nobody had merely ever requested the query earlier than. Different occasions, a dialog would immediate somebody to recall that previous field tucked away for many years, ready for the appropriate second to resurface.

One other facets is balancing analysis with private narrative—the emotional thread operating by the guide that makes the previous current.

Writing about historical past, notably painful historical past, will be emotionally overwhelming. To handle the emotional toll, I began operating early each morning. I felt the burden of those tales and realized that carrying them required care.

HMM: Is there something I haven’t requested about that you simply’d prefer to share?

JRD: One factor I’d prefer to share is how deeply private this journey has been — not simply by way of my circle of relatives historical past, however in the best way it has related me with so many others. Since Ihågkom oss until liv (Keep in mind Us to Life) was printed, I’ve obtained messages from readers who’ve by no means spoken about their Jewish heritage earlier than, or who’ve struggled with their very own sense of “in-betweenness.” I by no means anticipated that my exploration of reminiscence, loss, and id would resonate so strongly with others, however it has made me understand how common these themes are.