The testimony of Ginette Kolinka, 98 years old and survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where she was alongside Simone Veil and Marceline Loridan-Ivens, appears on Tuesday in a comic strip.
“Adieu Birkenau” is published by Albin Michel editions, with JDMorvan and Victor Matet for the screenplay, and three Spaniards for the drawing, Ricard Efa, Cesc F. Dalmases and Roger Surroca Sole.
The album recounts what was planned as Ginette Kolinka’s last trip to the camp, in October 2020.
After fleeing Paris in 1942, she was arrested in Avignon in March 1944, at the age of 19, transferred to Marseille, then the Drancy camp, and finally deported to Birkenau in April. She will pass through Bergen-Belsen then Theresienstadt, before being able to return to Paris in June 1945. She then lost 40 kg, to weigh only 26.
“Not thinking anymore, maybe that’s what saved my life,” she says in the album, about her captivity in the Nazi camps.
After the story, two historians specializing in the Shoah, Tal Brutmann and Caroline François, shed light on the historical context of Ginette Kolinka’s journey, with period documents, photos and drawings.
The album was born from his meeting with Victor Matet, a journalist who was researching his own family and who relayed at length the testimony of this survivor.
In comments reported by Albin Michel editions, Ginette Kolinka claims to have had reservations about the project, because she associated 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 around twenty years ago, has not refused 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.