"Sometimes I cannot believe that I stayed alive."
Born in 1937 in The Hague, Emmie Arbel was deported with her Jewish family by the Nazis in 1942. As a child, she survived the Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. When the war was over, she was eight years old. Her parents and grandparents had been murdered in the Holocaust.
Emmie and her brothers wre adopted by a foster family in the Netherlands. What seemd ike a refuge opened a new chapter of suffering for the already traumatized child. In 1949, the family emigrated to Israel, where life in th kibbutz only intensified Emmie's sense of isolation. Growing up, she felt like she didn't belong anywhere.
Until she took charge of her own life.
Today, Emmie Arbel lives near Haifa. She frequently travels to Germany to speak about her memories of the Holocaust. Her childhood and adolescence were marked by violence, abuse, silence and loneliness. But she also looks back on a life of rebellion, self-empowerment, and humor. Based on many in-depth conversations with Emmie Arbel, Barbara Yelin has created a haunting memoir that is also a reflection on memory itself.
The graphic novel "Emmie Arbel. The Color of Memory" was created as part of the international project "Visual Storytelling and Graphic Art in Genocide & Human Rights Education" at the University of Victoria, Canada. 40 pages of the book have already been published in the anthology "But I Live" (C.H. Beck) in 2022.
Barbara Yelin's highly acclaimed graphic novel is now also being published by Reprodukt in an English-language edition.
Edited by Charlotte Schallié and Alexander Korb
