During my time in Paris so far, I’ve been trying to go to a lot of the free museums and memorials. This past week, I went to the Mémorial de la Shoah and to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), which I thought was free based on information I found, but it actually costs €13. At each of these museums, I became intrigued by some of the photographs … Read More The Framing of Ourselves Through Self-Portraits
A few weeks ago, someone told me about the work of neurologist and psychologist Viktor Frankl and his time in a concentration camp duroing World War II. After the person told me about Frankl, I sought out his memoir Man’s Search for Meaning where he lays out his ideas surrounding logotherapy. Frankl explains that logotherapy, which derives from logos, the Greek word for “meaning,” “focuses on the meaning of … Read More The Importance of Art as Resistance and Existence
+ belonging: a german reckons with history and home, germany, graphic memoir, graphic novels, holocaust, nazi, nora krug, world war ii
Nora Krug begins her graphic memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home with an anecdote about one of her first encounters in New York. On the rooftop of a friend’s apartment building, an elderly woman struck up a conversation with Krug, asking her where she was from. When Krug affirmed that she was from Germany, the woman began to relate “how she had survived … Read More Indoctrination Through Education in Nora Krug’s “Belonging”
Over the past few weeks, I’ve read Hans Massaquoi’s Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany and Mary Berg’s diary that she wrote during World War II, specifically living and growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto before her family’s escape to the United States in March 1944. Massaquoi’s memoir didn’t appear until 1999, and he wrote it looking backwards, after individuals suggested he document his … Read More Beauty Amongst Violence in “The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in The Warsaw Ghetto”
Cover illustration by David Cooper for The Washington Post When Nana Nkweit asked James McBride how much discovering his Jewish background impacted his latest novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, McBride said that he discovered himself becoming “much more sensitized to the events of World War II than ever before.” He stated that his mother had cousins who died in he Holocaust, and he mentioned that … Read More History and the American Dream in James McBride “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store”
