Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow over her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. This “ingenious reckoning with the past” ( The New York Times), by award-winning artist Nora Krug investigates the hidden truths of her family’s wartime history in Nazi Germany. * Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Comics Beat, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal Bergson, AJL Book Reviews, Feb/Mar 2019).* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award * Silver Medal Society of Illustrators * Belonging would make a great addition to a library’s Holocaust collection. Though not a typical Holocaust-themed book (as it mostly presents the point-of-view of card-carrying Nazis and their descendants), it does relate what happened to the Jews of Karslruhe (both collectively and via personal testimony), as well as provide insight into the motivations of Krug’s forebears. Though the post-modern approach may be off-putting for some, Belonging is a fascinating mishmash which presents histories (present-day, WWII, pre-war), travelogues, popular culture, and genealogy into a colorful collage whose blending is greater than the sum of its parts.
At times, she even seems to be hyper-critical towards her family’s involvement. Although it’s impossible to be objective when trying to uncover family secrets, Klug resists the urge to accept everything at face value and expresses her skepticism when she notices discrepancies. interviews with historians, family members, witnesses, children of witnesses, visits to archives), as well as reproductions of primary documents she accessed during her hunt for the truth. In an attempt to learn and accept what members of her family did during the Holocaust, Klug goes on a journey of discovery (literally and figuratively) and shares with the reader both the details of how she went about her research (e.g. More than simply a personal biography, Krug’s narrative gives the reader insight into how guilt has become ingrained into the upbringing of contemporary German youth. Klug’s book incorporates prose, illustration, comic pages, and photographs in various combinations. It is therefore not surprising that Klug’s illustrated memoir is also complex, in both content and structure. Nora Krug is a complex author-a writer, illustrator, animator, and associate professor.
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