The testimony of Ginette Kolinka, 98-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where she was alongside former French minister and former European Parliament President Simone Veil and director Marceline Loredan-Ivens, appears Tuesday in comics.
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“Adieu Birkenau” was published by Albin Michel, with J. de Morvan and Victor Matet for the script, and three Spaniards for drawing, Ricard Eva, Cesc F. Dalmatis, and Roger Soroca Saul.
The album chronicles what was planned to be Ginette Kolinka’s last trip to the camp in October 2020.
After fleeing Paris in 1942, she was arrested in Avignon (south) in March 1944, aged 19, and transferred to Marseille, then to the Drancy camp, in the Paris region, and was finally deported to Birkenau in April. She would pass through Bergen-Belsen and then Theresienstadt, before being able to return to Paris in June 1945. She then lost 40 kg, leaving her weight at only 26.
“I no longer think, ‘Maybe this is what saved my life,’” she says in the album about her captivity in Nazi camps.
After the story, two historians specializing in the Holocaust, Tal Brotman and Caroline François, shed light on the historical context of Ginette Kolinka’s journey, through documents, photos and drawings dating back to the period.
The album was born after his meeting with Victor Matet, a journalist who was searching for his family and who extensively reported on the testimony of this survivor.
In the comments published by Albin Michel Publications, Ginette Kolinka claims that she had reservations about the project, because she associated comic strips 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 not turned down any 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.
