WE SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST

A graphic nonfiction book shares the history and legacy of the Holocaust through the stories of two Polish Jewish survivors.

Bluma Tishgarten and Felix Goldberg fell in love at a displaced persons camp outside Munich in 1945 and went on to raise a family in the United States, leaving Europe and the horrors of the Holocaust behind. Bluma and her sister had weathered Bergen-Belsen and Dachau; Felix had survived Auschwitz and the death march to Buchenwald. These stories are shared in tandem, a split perspective winding them together and including relevant historical information. Kinetic artwork in a classic graphic novel style accompanies the text, bringing their story to a new audience. The book frames itself as “a cautionary tale of what happens when people stand by and allow antisemitism, hate and prejudice to run rampant,” joining a repertoire of Holocaust sources that call a new generation to action over the fascistic tendencies still alive in our world. The American military is positioned heroically in the text, and America is portrayed as the land of the free, where an immigrant’s dreams of a better life can and will come true. An afterword by editor and project manager John Shableski briefly contextualizes America’s own history of racial oppression within the book’s overarching mission, but a nuanced consideration of America is lacking in the main text.

Moving and important.