The Narrative Art & Visual Storytelling project brings together survivors, artists, scholars, and students in order to create free educational resources for the study of the Holocaust.
As a genre, graphic novels offer readers new ways of engaging with and learning from history. In our project, survivors meet with a graphic novelist so they can know each other’s stories on a one-to-one basis. Based on these conversations over the course of many days, the graphic novelists begin to draw and tell the story with which they were entrusted. These graphic novels will be published and made freely available with accompanying pedagogical material in Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, and Hebrew for teachers around the world.
As part of these reunions, film and audio crews follow the artists and survivors as stories unfold. These multimedia records will be archived at partner institutions for the enrichment of Holocaust studies around the globe.
Emmie Arbel & Barbara Yelin
On February 7, 2020, Emmie Arbel met with Barbara Yelin (graphic novelist) in Kiryat Tiv’on, Israel to share her story.
Photo slideshow from the meeting
Film, But I Live: https://holocaustgraphicnovels.org/films/
David Schaffer & Miriam Libicki
In January 2nd & 3rd, 2020, David Schaffer met with Miriam Libicki in Vancouver, Canada (graphic novelist) to share his story. Mike Morash and Levi Hildebrand were on location to film the conversations.
Photo slideshow from the meeting
Preliminary Sketches
Film, If I Had Followed the Rules: https://holocaustgraphicnovels.org/films/
Nico and Rolf Kamp with Gilad Seliktar
On December 13, 2019, Israeli graphic novelist, Gilad Seliktar, travelled to Amsterdam to meet with Nico and Rolf Kamp. Their conversations and joint drawing sessions were filmed by Anna Bucchetti and Friso Pankonin. Dienke Hondius (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), and Jan Erik Dubbelman (Anne Frank House) organized and facilitated these meetings including a trip to the brothers’ childhood home in Amersfoort and their last hiding place in Achterveld.
Photo slideshow from the meeting
Amsterdam
Amersfoort
Achterveld
Preliminary Sketches
Film, Thirteen Secrets: https://holocaustgraphicnovels.org/films/