Graphic Novel Review: Adieu Birkenau: Ginette Kolinka’s Story of Survival

reviewed by Matt Reingold

Ginette Kolinka, Jean-David Morvan and Victor Matet (writers), Cesc and Efa (illustrators), Roger (colorist) and Edward Gauvin (translator). Adieu Birkenau: Ginette Kolinka’s Story of Survival. SelfMadeHero, 2024. https://www.selfmadehero.com/books/adieu-birkenau-ginette-kolinka-s-story-of-survival

If one were to compile a list of the subjects most-featured in Jewish graphic novels, the Holocaust would surely be the topic that has garnered the most attention. Since Art Spiegelman’s Maus was first serialized in Raw in 1980 and then subsequently published in two well-received and successful collected volumes in 1986 and 1991, license was afforded to authors and illustrators to creatively explore the Nazi-perpetrated genocide of 6 million of Europe’s Jews.

As the 21st century nears its quarter mark, the proliferation of graphic narratives about the Holocaust has not slowed despite the increased chronological distance from the original tragedy. In the past three years alone, a variety of works in English have been published that explore different facets of the Holocaust. This includes grandchildren trying to understand their grandparents’ experiences (Solomon J. Brager, Heavyweight, 2024; Jordan Mechner, Replay, 2024), child survivors telling their own stories (But I Live, 2022), speculative stories about what Anne Frank would do today were she alive (Ari Folman, Where is Anne Frank, 2022), and the horrors of the Holocaust on American soldiers (Leela Corwin, Victory Parade, 2024). Added to this group is Adieu Birkenau which first appeared in French in 2023.

Adieu Birkenau tells the story of Ginette Kolinka’s life from before the Holocaust and what she endured during it. The graphic autobiograhy was produced by a team of creators that included three writers (including Kolinka), two artists, and one colorist. The work is set in both the past and present, with readers learning about Kolinka’s upbringing in France, her eventual deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and how, in her seventies, she began to speak publicly about her wartime traumas. Much of the book is set during a 2020 school trip to Poland that was designed to introduce students to the horrors of the Holocaust. Kolinka’s role on the trip was as a survivor, there to speak to the students about her personal wartime experiences. Her co-authors, Morvan and Matet, joined the trip in order to document it for the graphic novel.

Readers who have deep familiarity with other Holocaust graphic novels will no doubt see vestiges of these other works in Adieu Birkenau. Using travel to Poland as a conduit for conveying historical traumas can be found in Jérémie Dres We Won’t Visit Auschwitz. Cesc and Efta’s superimposing contemporary experiences atop historical memories is also not novel; Rutu Modan did this in The Property. The use of history to inform reader reactions to contemporary injustices is also something that is present in other Holocaust graphic narratives. This includes Folman’s Where is Anne Frank and Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón’s Anne Frank.

My point in calling attention to the employed narrative tropes and the artistic decisions made by Adieu Birkenau’s creative team is not to suggest that their work is a duplication of previously issued works. Nor is it to offer a comparison that concludes that one rendering of the Holocaust is preferable to another. Rather, acknowledging what has come before - and with regards to the Holocaust, it is so very much - allows for a greater appreciation for what is new and novel in Adieu Birkenau’s exploration of the Holocaust.

First is the audience of school children who attend the trip to Poland alongside Kolinka. Though we do not know much about them, what we do know is that they are not students who attend a Jewish day school. Rather, they are average French school children who are taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from someone who personally suffered during a traumatic moment in world history. In fact, they are quite like Kolinka was as a child: an average French citizen. Kolinka loved playing sports and her closest friends were not Jewish. In fact, she openly shares with the reader that her family was not particularly religious. By calling attention to the ways that Kolinka is like the children with whom she is travelling and not someone primarily defined by something that makes her other, they bear witness to a tragedy that could have befallen them had they been born at a different time and to a different family. As witnesses, they, too, become owners of a sacred story and become part of the narrative of transmission. As readers, we, too, now become owners alongside the children, bound by the same obligation.

A second important feature of the work is its depiction of bodies. Maus’ power lay in its metaphoric depictions that highlighted the ways that Jews (and other groups) were seen as distinct from one another. Cesc and Efa do the very opposite. Their illustrated bodies are drawn in proportion and reveal the realness of the human physique and what happens to it when it is broken down and ravaged by hunger, disease, and violence. Readers see what naked bodies of average women look like as they await having their heads shaved and their arms tattooed. This includes flabby midsections, sagging breasts, and pubic hair. Their rendition eschews a Hollywoodization that presents bodies in an unrealistically idealized form. Instead, once again, what readers see are real people and real victims. Furthermore, the illustrations capture the women trying to cover themselves as they are exposed against their will. I cannot recall another example of a Holocaust graphic novel that so boldly and graphically depicts the human form at its most vulnerable and with this, the brutality of the Nazi regime.

The primary creative license that Cesc and Efa take has to do with a series of dark shadows. Used in panels set in Birkenau, they inhabit Kolinka’s memories and represent the many Jews who were killed because of Nazi persecution. As Kolinka guides the students through Birkenau, the shadows become illustrated in the present and no longer solely occupy space in Kolinka’s memories. Their enduring presence in her memory results in them becoming imaginatively rendered in the present. In these scenes, readers come to better understand the awful staying power of trauma and how, despite having lived outside of Birkenau for over 70 years, parts of her remain there too.

 It is the confluence of honest renderings of the past, depictions of the impact of trauma, and the invocation to create a different future that make Adieu Birkenau a valuable addition to the catalogue of Holocaust graphic novels. The children’s personal interactions with Kolinka at Birkenau depict the relationship that forms between the survivor who testifies and the audience who receives it. What we, as readers, gain from witnessing their transformation is the opportunity to also be transformed as we gain new understandings into one of the 20th century’s worst atrocities through the narrative power of a single survivor.

Film Review: JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience

reviewed by Matt Reingold

JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience. Tony Kim (dir.). JLTV and Turnkey Pictures, 2024.

            JewCE, or the Jewish Comics Experience < https://jewce.org/>, is an annual convention and awards ceremony held in New York City and sponsored by The Center for Jewish History. Its inaugural event in 2023 included the opening of an interactive museum exhibit that is designed to celebrate Jewish comics, cartoons, and graphic narratives and is now traveling around the country. This fall, JewCE released an almost 23-minute video about the exhibit and provided a copy for review.

The narrative arc of the video provides a chronological overview of Jewish comics, cartoons, and graphic novels since the 20th century. With so much to cover in a limited amount of time, viewers are introduced to seminal writers and artists such as Stan Lee and Jerry Siegel, and also to noteworthy figures in comic book history like the publisher Maxwell Gaines and psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. The video is narrated by JewCE’s exhibit curators, Roy Schwartz, Danny Fingeroth, and Miriam Eva Mora who also provide commentary and insights. I appreciated JewCE’s interest in moving beyond a description of what happened in Jewish comics history to an analysis of the importance of what happened. This is a demonstration of the curators’ stated intention to bring together not only artifacts, but to also draw upon history and comics scholarship to inform the exhibit’s content. The video concludes with a section on the exhibit’s interactive features which afford attendees the opportunity to participate in storyboarding and to see themselves as characters in comics.

One of the greatest strengths of the video (and the exhibit itself) is the inclusion of material published by Marvel Comics and DC Comics. Securing permissions can be notoriously tricky (and costly), but the inclusion of these materials provides viewers with strong visual anchors that allow them to see what the narrators are referring to. The inclusion of scenes featuring different characters in animated movies and tv shows was also a nice addition showing the many ways that characters who were originally conceived for print media have evolved over time.

Despite the film’s strengths, I have two concerns and both have to do with the use of superhero narratives. My first is with how Jewishness was read into superhero stories. In its inclusion of Jewish connections to the superhero genre, the three narrators document examples where creators make explicit reference to Jewish themes and topics like the famous cover of Captain America #1 where the hero punched Adolf Hitler in the face. Where I found myself less convinced was with the narrators’ decision to read Jewish creators’ stories and experiences into the characters. Some of these readings are ones that have long been espoused such as locating parallels between Superman being sent to Earth in a rocket ship by his parents who wanted to save him and the biblical Moses being saved by being sent down the Nile in a basket by his mother. Jules Feiffer wrote about that analogy over fifty years ago, and it has remained a part of the free-flowing background of Superman, even though he is never claimed to be Jewish. JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience also identifies Spider-Man as being Jewish. Though they do acknowledge that there are no explicit references to Peter Parker being Jewish, both Schwartz and Mora read his character as being Jewish. Mora says: “Spider Man is typical nebbish (nerdy). Slight. From Queens” and Schwartz adds “he says oy and meshugas (craziness) and tuches (butt) and Manischewitz.” Reading superhero stories as metaphors for national, religious, and ethnic minorities is not a novel concept, with Marvel’s X-Men being an oft-cited (and ex post facto) metaphor for any group that is singled out as other. Though it would temper its claims, I think the film would stand on more solid ground by emphasizing that this is a reading of these characters rather than the reading of them.

Moreover, if there was interest in telling the Jewish story in superhero comics, there are many characters whose Jewish identities are given significant treatment in comics and they could have been the focus of the superhero section of the video. Though The Thing is mentioned as being Jewish, the character’s decision to recite Hebrew prayers when his friend is hurt is not. Not mentioned at all is Magneto, retconned into being a Holocaust survivor and illustrated with a concentration camp tattoo in the comics. Magneto Testament, a limited series specifically about his wartime traumas, would have certainly been worth mentioning. Both of these examples are of characters whose Jewishness is explicit. It is important to acknowledge that pages from comics are on display at JewCE’s exhibit that show these (and other) superheroes doing Jewish things. I would have appreciated the film’s director focusing greater attention on those overt signs of Jewish content.

My second concern has to do with the decision to allocate almost 70% of the video to Jewishness in superhero stories. I found myself wishing that more attention was paid to the rest of the Jewish comics canon. During the superhero segment, detailed descriptions of people and stories were offered. Viewers are treated to the stories of how Gaines helped launch comic books and how Wertham was vehemently opposed to children reading comic books because their contents would influence children to commit crimes. Conversely, Harry Hershfield’s Abie the Agent, the first Jewish cartoon character, is not mentioned even once despite being a breakthrough success created decades prior to any of the superheroes. Art Spiegelman’s Maus, widely considered by scholars to be one of the most seminal graphic narratives ever published, is only referenced in relation to Spiegelman being a member of the underground comix movement. The limited mention of Spiegelman is reflective as to how every non-superhero author and artist is spoken about. After spending over 15 minutes on superhero stories, Spiegelman and the rest of the Jewish comic book and graphic novel canon are afforded just under 4 minutes total. In this short section, pages from different graphic novels are quickly splashed across the screen. This is done to highlight how Jewish communities from around the world are depicted in visualized narratives, but no specific details are provided beyond mentioning three Israeli artists and saying that their work shows diversity. The video’s inclusion of pages from these different works demonstrates that these other types of graphic narrative are included in the physical galleries themselves and the narrators and JewCE’s website mention the types of panels that were featured at the convention. These too show that thought and attention is being paid to non-superhero texts. I believe the film would have done a better job of showing the rich diversity of Jewish graphic narratives had greater balance been struck between the attention given to superhero stories and every other text.

As a scholar of Jewish comics, I fundamentally believe in the importance and value of telling Jewish stories in visualized narratives. As a fan of Jewish comics, a museum and convention about Jewish comics is right where I would want to be. All evidence suggests that Fingeroth, Mara, and Schwartz have done an admirable job including a wide range of texts at the exhibit in order to show attendees the richness of the Jewish experience as it has been told in Jewish comics and graphic narratives. I am hopeful that any future iterations of the video will provide viewers with that same attention to the whole of Jewish comics. Including more substantive examples – superhero and non-superhero – where Jewish expressions are on display will ensure that viewers leave the film with a deeper appreciation for how Jewish stories are told in illustrated narratives.

Book Review: DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book

reviewed by Gene Kannenberg, Jr.
[Full disclosure: I am the paper engineer of Here Comes Charlie Brown! A Peanuts Pop-Up published by Abrams ComicArts, which is affiliated with Abrams Books for Young Readers.]

Matthew Reinhart (paper engineering); Brad Walker, Marco Santucci, and Tom Derenick (pencils and inks); and Paul Mounts (colors). DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2024. USD$49.99. ISBN 9781419769450. https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/dc-super-heroes-the-ultimate-pop-up-book  

 

Prolific master paper engineer Matthew Reinhart’s DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-up Book stands as a companion to his 2022 book Marvel Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book (also from Abrams Books for Young Readers). However, it’s impossible not to compare it to Reinhart’s identically titled DC book published by Little, Brown in 2010. In both cases and in many respects, unfortunately, the newer book, while certainly an impressive achievement, comes up lacking.   

 

First off, let us look at the book on its own terms. The wrap-around cover art by Dan Mora contains a baker’s dozen of DC characters, with the front cover prominently featuring DC’s “Trinity” -- Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, the first two in the “trunks-less” mode they no longer sport in the current comic books (no doubt owing to the long lead-time books like these need for production purposes). The back cover lists the book’s credits and publication information, including, admirably, DC’s standard creator credits for Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. 

 

That Trinity corresponds to the first three openings (double-page spreads) in the book, each devoted to one of the characters and their respective casts and milieux. As with nearly all of Reinhart’s pop-up books, it pays to open each spread slowly, paying careful attention to how each element unfolds and resolves into its final form. The Wonder Woman opening is the only one not previewed on the book’s Amazon.com page or provided as a promotional image, perhaps because it’s the most impressive of the three; Diana Prince is posed dynamically, her lasso extending above and behind the top edge of the pages, while her left leg extends far beyond the bottom page edge. In contrast, Superman is overly barrel-chested and blocky; Clark Kent’s upper body does break the top edge, although—at least in my copy—his right arm remained trapped when unfolding and needed to be oh-so-gently teased out and into place, repeatedly.  

 

The Batman spread includes Robin (Damian Wayne) and Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) as well as Bruce Wayne, with the architecture of Gotham city (and Batman’s fan-folded cape) somewhat overpowering the characters. And, similarly to my copy’s Superman figure, Batman's left arm arrived mis-folded, resolving into a backwards-facing, shoulder-out-of-joint position. Again, I was able to coax it into a semblance of normality, but two mis-aligned elements in a book of this price is not a sign of excellent quality control (although I have not seen other copies for comparison). 

 

However, the impressiveness of the Wonder Woman figure comes with emblematic lost opportunities.  Surrounding the figure is a field of clouds, parts of which are covered with two text blocks, one of which conceals an additional pop-up opening flap. The clouds represent empty visual real estate which begs for more supplemental information or action. The additional pop-up reveals a ritual battle between Diana and Nubia, with Wonder Girl (Donna Troy) in the background. However, the accompanying text only gives a brief description of the island of Themyscira. Neither Nubia nor Donna Troy is named or even referred to. 

 

We see this lack of reference more drastically on the spread devoted to super-villains. The pop-ups depict five characters—Black Manta, Sinestro, Darkseid, Ares, and Lex Luthor—metaphorically standing above and around the Earth (which Sinestro is bathing in his ring’s yellow beam). The Earth presents a nice use of paper globe construction on a small scale. However, the accompanying text is terribly sparse, with neither Luthor or Ares being discussed at all. (As an only occasional reader of current DC comics, I had to do a little research to verify that one character was, in fact, Ares.)   

 

An additional opening on this spread reveals an intricate pop-up Joker face (complete with impressively animated eyebrows); the brief text discusses the Joker but ignores the five other Batman villains featured prominently in the background.  

 

Another spread focuses on Green Lantern (John Stewart), The Flash (Wally West), and Aquaman. Green Lantern’s figure is suitably architectural in its construction, while Aquaman dives below the bottom edge of the page, his glutes prominent. The Flash’s running figure is a marvel to watch unfold; I found myself repeatedly returning to this spread just to admire the ingenious mechanisms at play. Two additional openings reveal Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) and Hawkman & Hawkgirl. 

 

The final spread presents a surprisingly impressive, multi-tiered battle royale between dozens of heroes and villains, utilizing an x-shaped extension at the midpoint for additional support, and with two smaller V-shaped pops to the front. You will want to turn the book around to view the back of the structure to see more characters and situations. Here the additional unillustrated text block tells the story of the Justice League’s first battle, with Starro the Conqueror. Upon opening the flap, we see the JLA pop up around their round table. The text highlights the Trinity of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, but in the pop-up, the three center figures are Superman, Batman, and Black Canary – a strange choice given the text’s focus.     

 

All in all, DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book offers approximately sixteen pop-ups (depending on how you count/separate them) over its six openings. In contrast, the 2022 Marvel book has only ten—but nearly all of these ten are augmented by pull-tabs to create secondary pops, transformations, or other motions. These secondary motions all move beyond what you might expect from a traditional pop-up book. For example, in the Avengers tableau, Tony Stark stands in front of two suits of Iron Man armor; pull a tab, and suddenly he is covered in a third suit which rises from the floor. Bruce Banner is trapped in a radiation chamber; once you find and pull the hidden tab, the Hulk bursts open the chamber. Similarly, each member of the Fantastic Four is initially depicted by a pre-rocket-flight headshot; a subsequent tab pull reveals each character in powered pose. In short, the Marvel book’s secondary motions highlight action and transformation through user interaction in a way that the DC book does not. 

 

The Marvel book also uses a smaller typeface for its text (perhaps two points shorter), allowing for a much denser, description- and fact-filled reading experience. We do not experience the descriptive gaps in it which we do in the DC book. In fact, the X-Men spread includes not just a two-page pop-up, but also eleven small doors with character portraits; opening the doors reveal names and powers (the latter in an even smaller typeface). However, unlike the DC book, the Marvel book includes no creator credits for any of its characters. 

 

While the 2024 DC book is not as sophisticated or as fact-filled as its 2022 Marvel counterpart, its contents also fall short of 2010’s identically titled DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book, also by Matthew Reinhart (and which, one imagines, served as an inspiration for these newer volumes). A side-by-side comparison reveals that the 2024 book is in large part a re-working of the 2010 book. While all of the art is new and by different artists, many of the paper engineering elements are substantially similar, particularly Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the final battle. The 2024 versions do contain some structural advances—although, as noted above, a couple of these enhancements led to difficulties in execution when mass-produced. 

 

While still consisting of six primary openings, the 2010 version contains thirteen additional openings, seven of which are two or more layers deep, compared to seven single-layer additional openings overall in the new edition. It also uses a smaller typeface and has more text boxes, here reaching out closer to the margins than in the new version, leading to more text overall. There are no unidentified characters. Indeed, even the final battle is accompanied by a numbered legend which names every character in the enormous construct. Granted, the 2024 final battle’s art is more detailed and contains more characters, but the point still stands. More layers and more text contribute to a greater sense of history and scope for the DC Universe. 

The 2010 book also contains special enhancements beyond paper engineering: In the Batman spread, the Bat signal lights up, thanks to an embedded battery. Wonder Woman’s lasso is made of string, and part of it twirls as you open the page. Further, in one of the additional openings, her invisible jet (not included in the present volume) has clear plastic parts, ironically adding further dimensionality to the cockpit.

 

Two images from the 2010 book

 

On its own, 2024’s DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book by Matthew Reinhart et al. represents a solid example of paper engineering, visually featuring a broad array of DC heroes and villains, with the text (admittedly, something that often gets glossed over in pop-up books) leaving something to be desired. When compared to its much more intricate precursor from 2010, or even to the similarly themed but mechanically more complex Marvel book from just two years ago, it seems like a lost opportunity from the otherwise reliable Reinhart.