How did this process of ‘taking responsibility and restoring agency’ work during the project?
Barbara Yelin: “It took more time than I expected. It was not just the question: ‘Emmie, what are your memories of the Holocaust?’ – it was a conversation about a whole life. This book could only happen on the basis of our many conversations. Emmie was so generous to give me this time. This was also important because some specific decisions took time with Emmie. Sometimes it took a while before
she could say: ‘Okay Barbara, now I know I want to tell this period of my life, because it is part of it’. Or ‘Barbara: I remembered something more’.
“We spoke about many details. Every second month or half a year Emmie would receive a new version of the story board and we would speak about it. This is what makes a drawing a special way to communicate. Drawing is about very specifically looking at things, encouraging you to be mindful and attentive in the moment. When I draw something, new questions about the subject I am drawing at
that moment. Questions I did not even know
I would have before. I gathered these questions, and would ask them to Emmie. With her answers, I renewed my drawing, after which the whole process would repeat itself. This dialogue would result in more questions than she had had before as well.”
You mean that new questions came up with Emmie about her own experiences and memories once you showed her a drawing you made?
Barbara Yelin: “Yes. There are questions she and I would not think about before. What was the temperature? What did you wear? Had there been people in the room? Was there a guard? Did you sit on the floor? How many layers did the bed have? Was it dark outside? And of course: what did you feel?”
Charlotte Schallié: “This collaborative reciprocal process shows how visualization centers the lived experiences of survivors. Emmie has blackouts, bits of experiences she cannot remember, how do you visualize that? In a more traditional oral history testimony, I would not ask, for example: was it dark
outside? What did you see? What did you feel? – But these questions prompt memoriesthat in a more scripted or formative interview would not surface. As Barbara said: drawing was necessary for the questions to come up. Because the process of drawing is a tool of critical investigation, it engages with
these important questions.”
How has this impacted your idea of the use of graphic novels in public history?
Charlotte Schallié: “Early on I thought graphic novels would be great for knowledge mobilization, for making the story accessible. But then I realized: wait a minute, creating visual narratives with survivors is in itself
a research tool that we should explore much more deeply. You talked about the temporal
changes between the here and now in The Color of Memory, but the point of view actually shifts as well: in several sections of the book we see in black textboxes that sometimes it is Emmie as an adult speaking, and then suddenly it is the child speaking, even though it is the grown up version of Emmie whom we see on the page… this is so complex, and so rich for us to think more critically about the fabric of memory.
We should also think about graphic novels as giving the survivor a tool for self-documentation. This means that we return agency to Emmy creating space for her – with the help of Barbara – to speak about her experiences from the perspective of a small child or a grownup woman .”
Is that what you learned from the project so far?
Charlotte Schallié: “In Emmie Arbel, but also in But I Live the survivors were not reduced to the
experience of human suffering. We asked Emmie Arbel, Nico and Rolf Kamp and David Schaffer to choose how they would like to be captured in images, also representing their livesin the here and now. What we owe to the survivors when we truly work with them, not about them, changes the entire
research dynamics.”
And yet, contrary to these inspiring outcomes, Barbara, you end the book with an afterword in which you seem somehow disheartened. You write: "…I wanted to find a way to tell this suffering, I wanted to find connections, maybe
I wanted, how presumptuous, to find comfort for Emmie, for us. Yet it did not happen…"ii Why did you decide to end your book on this note?
Barbara Yelin: “That is what I felt. What can we do, about the past? I found that there is no answer. What can Emmie do? She can live. Of course, I knew that from the beginning, but maybe I wished somehow that collecting her story, structuring it and narrating it, would solve or explain something. That is not the case. As a German who has nazi-family history, I can learn, I can listen, and I can cry
with Emmie, nothing else.”
Barbara Yelin (© 2024 Martin Friedrich) en Charlotte Schallié
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