The testimony of Ginette Kolinka, 98 years old and survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where she was together with former French minister and former President of the European Parliament Simone Veil and director Marceline Loridan-Ivens, appears in comics on Tuesday.
“Adieu Birkenau” is published by Albin Michel Editions, with JDMorvan and Victor Matet for the script and three Spaniards for the drawing, Ricard Efa, Cesc F. Dalmases and Roger Surroca Sole.
The album recounts Ginette Kolinka’s last planned trip to the camp in October 2020.
After fleeing Paris in 1942, she was arrested in Avignon (South) in March 1944 at the age of 19, transferred to Marseille, then to the Drancy camp in the Paris region and finally deported to Birkenau in April. She passed through Bergen-Belsen and then Theresienstadt before returning to Paris in June 1945. She then lost 40 kg and only weighed 26 kg.
“Don’t think about it anymore, maybe that saved my life,” she says in the album about her imprisonment in the Nazi camps.
Following the story, two historians specializing in the Shoah, Tal Brutmann and Caroline François, illuminate the historical context of Ginette Kolinka’s journey with historical documents, photos and drawings.
The album grew out of his meeting with Victor Matet, a journalist who was researching his own family and relayed in detail the testimony of this survivor.
In comments from Albin Michel Editions, Ginette Kolinka claims she had reservations about the project because she associates comics with humor.
“At first I didn’t really agree (…) It’s a sad story. But I changed my mind,” she explains.
The story of the visit to the camp shows the strength of character of this witness who, since she decided to pass on her story to younger generations about twenty years ago, has never refused a request to speak to middle or high school students.
“When I’m with them, I’m their age. I don’t feel old,” she says.