Review by C.J. Bunce
Countless people have explored and written family histories. Joanna Rubin Dranger’s exploration of her family is in many ways just another well-researched family history. What makes Remember Us to Life different first is that it’s presented in a graphic novel form and includes photographs and ephemera like physical historical records reproduced to document and serve as proof the the facts presented. The result of the author’s deep research into what happened to her Jewish ancestry because of anti-Semitism and World War II, the book stretches beyond the normal story to connect all the tendrils of hate and evil caused not only by Nazis in Germany but racists throughout Russia, Sweden, Norway, Poland, and across Europe and into America. In examining only one family she pulls together how widespread the disease of racism was across three continents, and shows why everyone needs to continue to study the Holocaust and the surrounding culture that embolded racists so that it can be stopped before happening to Jewish people or any other group of people again.
Dranger grew up in Sweden, looking toward an aunt for camaraderie and advice. She looked like her and she even kept a painting by a now famous artist of her aunt in her home. But her aunt’s family history and what happened to the Jewish people during World War II plagued her thoughts and she eventually became depressed and turned to suicide. An event from more than half century ago still has its tendrils affecting Jewish people today, and the author herself was recently the subject of racist graffiti. This book is in part how the author asked her own questions of her family’s past. Why when she interviewed many of her older relatives did they not speak of World War II events in detail? Even worse, how did they forget that family members were “disappeared”–never to be spoken of or heard from again?
Through Dranger’s research she was able to locate family members long thought dead, while forming clearer pictures of those who were herded into trains to be sent off to be murdered in concentration camps. Her search is a balance between some mundane hard work and some exciting finds. What makes this more significant than anyone’s family album is the fact that the findings are so jaw-dropping, the horrors so real. Key individuals within all of these nations were complicit in the circumstances that led to the Holocaust. Even more eye-opening are the parallels of the early events of World War II to political movements in America in 2025. That wasn’t the intent of the book, as its original editions in Swedish and Norwegian were published in 2023.
Copies of objects from the 1940s bring this book to life, as suggested by the title, borrowed from a Jewish prayer book. These objects include the actual cards with Dranger’s family’s names that the Nazis used to keep track of Jewish people as they planned their mass termination. Other reproductions offer insight into propaganda in contemporary news articles, and other items show those murdered. All along millions stood by and didn’t stand up to protest so many governmental actions, so many dictatorial policies, or defend the innocent.
As she quotes in her book, “The first generation were quiet, the second generation felt they couldn’t ask, and now the third generation tries to find out what happened.” Everyone should read this book and learn from it, before they won’t let you read books like it again. In fact the publisher should send a copy of the book to every current member of Congress. It’s that important, that impactful, that crucial. Ask any graduate of any history program and they will tell you the most important study of history is the Holocaust. This book would be a solid class supplement to any history study program.
An important work, don’t miss Remember Us to Life, available for the first time this month in an English edition (by Maura Tavares), available from Ten Speed Press at Elite Comics and here at Amazon and in all bookstores.
