{"id":40051,"date":"2022-12-09T02:41:29","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T10:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=40051"},"modified":"2022-12-08T18:47:12","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T02:47:12","slug":"survivors-share-their-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2022\/12\/09\/survivors-share-their-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Survivors share their stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlotte Schalli\u00e9, a University of Victoria scholar and Holocaust historian who is leading the graphic novel project, with survivor David Schaffer and graphic artist Miriam Libicki, left, at Schaffer\u2019s home in Vancouver in January 2020. (photo by Mike Morash)<\/em><\/p>\n

A University of Victoria project, first announced in January 2020, came to fruition this spring with the release of But I Live<\/em>, a graphic novel that tells the stories of four Holocaust survivors.<\/p>\n

But I Live<\/em> involved an international team of researchers, students and institutional partners from three continents, and brought together four survivors and three graphic artists to create an autobiographic series recounting one of the darkest periods in human history. The survivors who told their stories were Emmie Arbel (Israel), Nico and Rolf Kamp (Holland) and David Schaffer (Canada). Their stories were transformed into art by Barbara Yelin (Germany), Gilad Seliktar (Israel) and Miriam Libicki (Canada). The project was edited and organized by Charlotte Schalli\u00e9, chair of the department of Germanic Slavic studies at UVic and head of Narrative Art and Visual Storytelling in Holocaust and Human Rights Education at the university.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>
But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust was published by New Jewish Press (2022).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMany people in North America have learned about the history of the Holocaust through survivor stories that are repeated in popular culture, which largely focus on survival in the concentration camps or experiences of hiding in Nazi-occupied territory,\u201d said Schalli\u00e9. \u201cThe three stories in But I Live<\/em> complicate these mainstream narratives by exploring complex topics such as the burden of memory, the need to testify, the ripple effects of trauma and the impact of the Holocaust on descendants of survivors, for example. As historical documents, they are also important for centring the survivors\u2019 experiences and enabling them to tell their own stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the gravity of the crimes committed during the Holocaust is well documented, the majority of visual records were largely produced by the Nazis and their collaborators. \u201cThese are important historical sources,\u201d said Schalli\u00e9, \u201cbut a sole focus on documentation produced by perpetrators ignores the value of survivors as living knowledge-keepers.\u201d<\/p>\n

An objective of the project, therefore, was to turn the perspective over to the survivors. \u201cA survivor-centred approach to gathering testimony about the Holocaust honours the integrity and humanity of the person\u2019s lived experience, while respecting their right to tell their own story,\u201d Schalli\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n

Another consideration in the project was time \u2013 the majority of Holocaust survivors alive today were young children during the war and are now in their 80s and 90s. The importance of learning from these knowledge-keepers is increasingly vital.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t engage them in our research now, their expertise and experience will soon be lost,\u201d Schalli\u00e9 stressed.<\/p>\n

There is, in her view, a moral obligation and duty to collect and preserve survivor testimonies. \u201cEach voice that was marked to be silenced by the perpetrators of these atrocities matters greatly and needs to be heard and acknowledged,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

An additional goal of But I Live<\/em> is to interest young readers in Canada, where high schools are not mandated to include the study of the Holocaust in their curricula.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that our visual storytelling work will appeal to youths and young adult readers, and elicit within them a deep sense of empathy that leads them to think critically about the historical past and present,\u201d said Schaille.<\/p>\n

\u201cHolocaust survivor stories that are presented as heroic narratives, where the storyline progresses from dark to light \u2013 or from a site of danger to one of safety \u2013 place a heavy burden and responsibility on survivors, whose life stories and memories are unlikely to conform to that model, and simplifies the reality of their lived experiences. But I Live<\/em> holds space for fragmented memories, difficult emotions and the afterlife of trauma. In doing so, it complicates mainstream tropes, clich\u00e9s and iconographic imagery that is sometimes misappropriated or exploited in popular culture,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>
A panel from \u201cA Kind of Resistance,\u201d a graphic narrative by Miriam Libicki from interviews with David Schaffer. (image by Miriam Libicki)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The work at UVic expands on previous projects, such as the book On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Beyond Testimony<\/em> by Henry Greenspan of the University of Michigan, which focuses on survivor accounts while being mindful of the trauma such memories can evoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cEliciting experiences and memories of extreme human suffering from the survivors necessitated a research process and practice that privileged their safety by minimizing the risk of re-traumatization, managing potential triggers and providing sustained support for all participating project partners,\u201d Schalli\u00e9 said. \u201cThis approach ensured that we \u2013 the stewards of survivor memories \u2013 honoured what we felt was our obligation and duty to amplify the voices of the Holocaust survivors.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I Live<\/em> was released by New Jewish Press, a division of University of Toronto Press. A German edition, Aber ich lebe<\/em>, was published by C.H. Beck in July and has received positive coverage in the German broadsheets Der Tagesspiegel<\/em> and Die Zeit<\/em>. In November, the book received a German LUCHS-Preis for literature.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 23, But I Live<\/em> won the 2022 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for biography, presented at York University in Toronto. At the ceremony, the project was lauded for exemplifying \u201cthe power of the non-fiction graphic novel to convey the experience and aftereffects of the Shoah.\u2026 The historical essays, an illustrated postscript from the artists and personal words from each of the survivors offer a profound meditation on the past and its reach into the present.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I Live<\/em> will be featured at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival<\/a> here in Vancouver on Feb. 12.<\/p>\n

Sam Margolis<\/strong> has written for the <\/em>Globe and Mail, the <\/em>National Post, UPI and MSNBC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte Schalli\u00e9, a University of Victoria scholar and Holocaust historian who is leading the graphic novel project, with survivor David Schaffer and graphic artist Miriam Libicki, left, at Schaffer\u2019s home in Vancouver in January 2020. (photo by Mike Morash) A University of Victoria project, first announced in January 2020, came to fruition this spring with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40059,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[9791,7611,53,72,2893,1516,5246],"class_list":["post-40051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-charlotte-schallie","tag-graphic-novel","tag-holocaust","tag-jewish-book-festival","tag-survivors","tag-university-of-victoria","tag-uvic"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}