Barbara Yelin on Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory

As of April 7th, Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory (translated by Helge R. Dascher, edited by Charlotte Schallié and Alexander Korb) is available in the UK and in North America!
The telling of a life story like that of Emmie Arbel's is a story in itself, so we got together with artist and author Barbara Yelin for this exclusive Q&A.

Barbara Yelin was born in 1977 in Munich and studied illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. She became known as a comic book artist in France for Le Visiteur (The Visitor, 2004) and Le Retard (Delay, 2006). Her first publication in Germany was Gift (2010, written by Peer Meter), the story of a historical crime that brought her work to the attention of a wider audience. Her subsequent career has included her popular comic strip Riekes Notizen (Rieke’s Notes), first printed in the daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau in 2011, and The Summer of Her Life (with Thomas von Steinaecker, SelfMadeHero, 2020). Her graphic novel Irmina (SelfMadeHero, 2016) received an Eisner nomination. She lives and works in Munich.

SelfMadeHero: While few things are as extraordinary as Emmie Arbel’s own life, the way you came together to create this book is nonetheless remarkable. Without spoilers, what key memories stand out to you from the formation of that relationship?

Barbara Yelin: I naturally remember our first meeting. It was at the Ravensbrück Memorial, the former concentration camp, in summer of 2019. Emmie had one hour of time for me, and I found her sitting outside surrounded by many young international adults with whom she’d been sharing her memories of being a child in the camps. We found a quiet place to talk and she lit a cigarette and said to me: “OK, shoot.“ We spoke for an hour, her daughter also joined us, and then she left. Two weeks later she sent me a message saying that she would like to work and speak with me, despite her doubts as to whether the graphic novel was a fitting medium for her story, and invited me to her home. I remember how Emmie picked me up from the station in Haifa for the first time in 2020: a small lady, 88 years old today, waiting in her car.

This was followed by many, many conversations between 2019 and 2023, meeting in Germany, Israel, The Netherlands and many times online during the pandemic. We’ve been to many places, including Amsterdam where we found her mother’s name at the National Holocaust Names Memorial. We finished the book in September 2023, but we still meet when possible, and we often talk.

SMH: Your artwork in Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memoryis both vivid and gritty, drawing readers into those dark moments from Arbel’s life. When the two of you discussed how to visually convey her story, were stylistic and aesthetic elements a large part of that conversation? How did you decide upon the exact ‘colour’ of memory?

Barbara: Emmie was very clear that she wanted the narration of her memories to be as accurate as possible, historically and personally – and this was exactly my approach too. Artistically, visually, stylistically, she absolutely gave me artistic license. She trusted me in the transformation of her story, I would say. This was always based on a mutual interest in being in dialogue with each other. I showed her my first sketches as well as the final drawings, and she shared her feedback and feelings about each piece. The question about the colour of memory – which is black for her – came up when I showed her new sketches, and I understood how she connected certain colours strongly with each part of her life.

There was only one thing she was quite strict about with me: how I portrayed her present-day self in my illustrations. I tried my best and she ultimately approved of them. Emmie is an honest person with a dry sense of humour, a wonderful friend.

SMH: SelfMadeHero readers may remember that this isn’t your first graphic novel concerned with the human cost of Hitler’s rise to power. Your graphic novel Irmina, itself biographical, earned multiple awards and nominations upon its release. How do you look back on that book now that you have also told Emmie Arbel’s story?

Barbara: Irmina was an important work for me, in many ways. It was the first project where I worked with historical sources and conducted independent research using parts of documents and letters while also collaborating with historians and archives. It was also focused on how a single person, a woman, is shaped by history while simultaneously shaping history herself. These interests stayed with me while working on many following books, and also led to the book about Emmie Arbel. For The Colour of Memory I was supported by a team of international scientists, historians, archives and experts, and the mutual exchange with all of them was fundamentally important.

Irmina focused on the perspective of a woman alongside supporters and perpetrators of the Nazi regime, which itself reflects a part of my own family history. My goal was to show how the deliberate choice of so many Germans to turn a blind eye from the atrocities committed against Jews and others enabled the rise of National Socialism and finally the Holocaust.

Today, in times of dangerous ruptures of political developments, of wars, new fascism and genocide, of racism and antisemitism, I am specifically horrified by how timeless these topics are.

SMH: From March 2016 to February 2026 – that’s just shy of an exact decade between the UK releases of Irmina and Emmie Arbel. It almost goes without saying that stories about people like Emmie Arbel may be needed even more now than a decade ago. How do you feel about this book reaching English-language readers at this exact time?

Barbara: Emmie’s story is an unbearable sequence of violence, death, loss, illness, and abuse, not only during the Holocaust but also in the decades which followed. It is the story of  a woman reflecting on her traumatic memories, speaking about pain, grief, rootlessness, loneliness, but then also about life, therapy, family, resilience, friendship, and hope. It delves deep into a single person, but also explores many moments from history. The book was finished already in late summer 2023, and came out that autumn in Germany.

Emmie Arbel’s story is, as I see it, a universal and deeply human story about a woman who, after decades of having no words for her painful memories, does not keep silent any more. Instead, she speaks up for herself, and she refuses to be caught in isolation and hatred. More than anything else in the world she wants peace. Emmie reaches out to the world and says, “Accept people who are different. And spread good in the world, not bad.”

I think that we will really need these words.

SMH: This book was originally developed as part of the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives Project. How did that come about? What was it like to participate in that effort?

Barbara: SCVN was – and is – absolutely relevant for everything that is connected to this book. Charlotte Schallié, head of the project, approached me in 2018 and suggested that I be part of it and that I meet Emmie Arbel. She and her team of international historians, experts, archives, artists and survivors built a network focused on the question of how to depict the perspectives of those who’ve survived genocide. That includes projects about different genocides which can be seen on visualnarratives.org. There was a first publication in 2022 called But I Live, before Emmie and I decided to lengthen her story and rework it into a new, longer book which was also edited and supported by Alexander Korb and Charlotte Schallié.

The exchange between everyone involved is most fundamental – it is a collective work that combines aspects of the academic, the artistic, and the ethical.

SMH: How did the presence/involvement of Emmie Arbel’s family influence this book’s development? Did their memories and perceptions of Emmie inform how you ultimately depicted her and her story?

Barbara: I am very thankful that Emmie’s daughters agreed to frequently be part of our conversations. They offered their own memories and perspectives, and daughters and mother alike showed me how it is to speak as a family with such a deep history.

SMH: Many Holocaust survivors go through long periods of being unable to share their stories with even their own families; one of Emmie’s children recounts that she hadn’t heard her mother’s story until she was already 29 years old in 1994. What do you hope English-language readers will take away from Emmie’s story now that you’ve laid it out on the page at last?

Barbara: Let’s just never stop learning, about the past and present and the complexity of it, and about what it means to be human.

Thank you all for reading! Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory is out now in the UK and North America.