2023-09-29 05:10:00
On the cover of the comic, there are two Ginettes. The first, from behind, with a shaved head, a transparent and emaciated silhouette, walks towards the entrance door to the concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the war threw her, in 1944, into the age 19. The second, from the front, represents a chic old lady, with graying hair, who, for years, accompanied school groups on trips to Poland to tell them History through her stories, what she experienced in this death camp.
It is these two Ginettes that are told in the comic strip “Adieu Birkenau”, which will be published Monday October 2 by Albin Michel. This work is the subject of a temporary exhibition which begins this Sunday at the Shoah Memorial in Drancy. The public will be able to (re)discover the history of the Deportation through the youth of this 98-year-old Jewish grandmother, who has already published several works on its history.
Arrested while fleeing towards the free zone
“Ginette Kolinka is a colorful personality,” describes Victor Matet, journalist and co-writer of the comic strip. I met her at the Shoah Memorial book fair in 2017. I met her once more by chance on a boat in Brittany and I never let her go. I wanted to know more regarding her. The first time she arranged to meet me, she asked me to drink a beer following her gym class. She was 95 years old. This gives you an idea of the character. I did a long report on her for France Inter, then I said to myself that we might tell more things in comics. »
The album “Adieu Birkenau” will be released on October 2 by Albin Michel.
In 112 pages, the album recounts Ginette’s life during the war, her first steps dressed in the yellow star, her flight to the free zone, her arrest, her internment in the Drancy camp. “I made friends my age there, we had nothing to do except sing and joke with each other,” she says. We knew we were going to go to a labor camp. This worried my father, but I explained to him, very confidently, that people worked in factories or in the fields all their lives, it didn’t kill them. »
And then, on April 13, 1944, there was the departure for Auschwitz-Birkenau from the Bobigny freight station. “On the platform, there was a freight train,” she remembers. I thought he was going to leave and someone else was going to come for us following. But no… the merchandise was us. » Then comes the story of his survival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his time at the Bergen-Belsen camp then his transfer to Czechoslovakia, to a camp that had just been liberated, before his evacuation to Paris. Back in France, she found her mother and told her of the death of her brother and her father, who had been arrested with her.
“Not happy at all” at first, she changed her mind regarding the comic
The comic strip shows Ginette’s life today in parallel. The authors followed her on a trip to Poland with students from the Beaumarchais college in Paris, where she herself was a child student. “In comics, we alternate the story between the past and the present,” emphasizes Victor Matet. There is a contrast between the seriousness of what she saw and the humor she uses on a daily basis. » Like this time when, to pass the time while waiting for a bus with schoolchildren, she starts miming the names of the capital’s metro stations.
“When I was told regarding this comic book idea, I wasn’t happy at all,” she confided this Wednesday during the inauguration of the exhibition in Drancy. I asked myself how anyone might dare to make a comic strip on such a tragic subject. For me, comics were comic stories. Then I changed my mind. I told myself that it might be an entry point to make young people want to know more. » Young people to whom in recent years she has continued to repeat this message: we are not asking you to love everyone, but just to accept others.
“Farewell Birkenau, an Auschwitz survivor tells us”, by Ginette Kolinka, Victor Matet, Jean-David Morvan, Efa, Cesc and Roger, at Albin Michel. 112 pages. Price: 21.90 euros.
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