JewCE 2024 took place this past November and the convention has posted videos of the various panels including “Drawing From Memory: From Archive to Graphic Novel.”

How can the descendants of Holocaust survivors reckon with generational trauma through art? How does each generation’s relationship with tragedy change over time, in shifting social and political conditions? Art Spiegelman’s Maus, originally published in 1986, was a groundbreaking work using comics to express the tragedy and generational trauma of the Holocaust. Today, third- and fourth-generation descendants of Holocaust survivors in the United States reckon not only with the generational trauma, but with their positionality in complex and uncertain political times. With much of the Holocaust’s generation no longer around, scholars, authors, and interested family members rely on archives to piece together stories. Graphic memoirist Ari Richter, who researched his graphic family saga Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz in the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) Archives, grapples with these challenges through his artistic and literary exploration of his family history. In “Drawing From Memory,” Professor Amy Hungerford of Columbia University will engage in conversation with Richter about bringing the archive into the graphic novel. 

Presented by the Leo Baeck Institute