Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory
Barbara Yelin
The haunting testimony of Holocaust survivor Emmie Arbel: arrested, deported, and imprisoned at the age of five, and of the inspirational life she built in its aftermath.
Arrested with her family in the Netherlands, deported by the Nazis to Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen, and orphaned―all by the age of seven―Emmie Arbel survived the camps, only to face a new ordeal of suffering in what should have been a place of refuge. Traumatized as a child by violence, abuse, and isolation, she has transformed her survival into an inspirational lifelong mission both to bear witness to the Holocaust, and to celebrate the enduring resilience of the human spirit.
Working closely with Emmie herself, the acclaimed German graphic artist Barbara Yelin has created an unforgettable “visual biography” of this remarkable woman: her rebellious independence, her indomitable humour, the wisdom of her contemplation.
Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory is at once a haunting portrayal of a historical atrocity, an inspiring account of a modern friendship, a beautiful work of art, and a meditation on memory itself.
This graphic novel was developed as part of the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives Project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Barbara Yelin was born in 1977 in Munich, and studied illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. She became known as a comic book artist in France for Le Visiteur (The Visitor, 2004) and Le Retard (Delay, 2006). Her first publication in Germany was Gift (2010, with a text by Peer Meter), the story of a historical crime, brought her work to the attention of a wider audience. Her subsequent career has included her popular comic strip Riekes Notizen (Rieke’s Notes), first printed in the daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau in 2011, and The Summer of Her Life (with Thomas von Steinaecker, SelfMadeHero, 2020). Her graphic novel Irmina (SelfMadeHero, 2016) received an Eisner nomination. She lives and works in Munich.
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