Emmie Arbel

"Emmi, what colour is the memory?" - "What colour? Black." Barbara Yelin's documentary graphic novel tells the story of what it is really like to pass on memories when they are so painful that they only lead to blackout, to blackness, for decades. Yelin draws this traumatic blackness again and again in the life of a strong woman, the Jew Emmie Arbel, who was interned with her family in the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a four-year-old girl. The pictures of her memories are the result of over 200 conversations and encounters between the two women; they are supplemented by contextualising accompanying texts at the end of the book. Emmi Arbel's moving life story only becomes visible and narratable through the drawings, which gradually emerge from the black, in the form of scraps of memory, as shapes, lines or colours. Her memories sometimes emerge spontaneously and unchronologically, sometimes they are blurred or almost colourless, some are only perceptible as a feeling when looking at a photo or smelling a place. Yelin's documentary dares to be radically human and subjective. She masterfully uses the possibilities of the medium to capture the actual process of mutual storytelling in a personal, colourful and lively encounter. This title was nominated for the 2024 German Children՚s Literature Award.