Year: 2025

On November 14, SCVN Research Assistant Lucie Kotesovska met with Nora Krug, an internationally acclaimed artist and illustrator and author of several book-length visual narratives. Nora is currently an artist-in-residence at Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, where she is conducting research of the survivors’ video and written testimonies. Her aim is to produce a graphic novel based on her engagement with these archival sources.

In this interview, Nora spoke about her current research and how she envisions the form of her next book. She also shared her thoughts on the unique potential of the visual narrative when communicating survivors’ experience and whether it is ever possible to overcome the trauma of war.

Lucie: Can you tell us a little bit about your current research and your research method as you work with the materials at Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archives, and also, how do you envision the final product at this point?

Nora: I’m only just embarking on the research for the book. I haven’t fully figured out the themes yet, but roughly speaking, I think it will be about the question of resistance and forgiveness, and whether we can ever overcome political trauma, personal trauma, and retaliation, all of these aspects. I’m researching the testimonies of survivors that were recorded in the 70s and 80s that touch on these subjects. I’m watching the interviews and I’m looking for certain keywords. I’m finding it difficult to find certain information, especially when it comes to description of violence. It’s a taboo, for instance, to talk about violent acts that you might have been involved with during the resistance. That’s an interesting component, but also something that’s hard to track down at least based on what I’ve encountered so far. I’m eager to look at both men’s and women’s testimonies from various different countries. I’ve watched some in Hebrew—there’s often a transcription in English—some in German, some in Polish, some in English. It’s interesting to observe how differently people dealt with the legacy of trauma, of experiencing trauma. People experienced it in different ways and had different modes of survival. I’m interested in that too—what makes us respond to certain traumas in different ways. And while I’m doing this, I’m also doing some research outside.

I would say when I embark on research, I’m not extremely systematic, I’m rather very broad. And I try to articulate the basic underlying questions that I’m asking myself for a new book project. I’m not interested in telling a story chronologically, you know, the story of one person’s life. While the testimonies are very gripping and emotional, I’ve decided not to focus on one person’s life, and not to tell a chronological story but rather approach universal themes that I find in the interviews and create a sort of collage of my own thoughts on that subject that will include individual narratives. For instance, my book Belonging was structured in this way:  I interwove several different narratives in a kaleidoscopic way. So, I think that’s what I’m envisioning at the moment—including different voices. I would also like to branch out after this year at Yale to other crimes, other wars, other cultures, and other religions, so that the subject of the book won’t entirely focus on the Holocaust, but also on how we deal with these experiences universally.

I’m not interested in telling a story chronologically, you know, the story of one person’s life. While the testimonies are very gripping and emotional, I’ve decided not to focus on one person’s life, and not to tell a chronological story but rather approach universal themes that I find in the interviews and create a sort of collage of my own thoughts on that subject that will include individual narratives. 

Now that I’m at Yale, I’ve been connecting with professors from different departments including the Visual Arts Library, the Beinecke Library, and the Psychiatry Department, to get different people’s input into these questions. I also found a photo album at a flea market in Berlin some years ago that belonged to a German soldier. He documented an atrocity committed by the German Wehrmacht in Poland in 1939. I had this album lying around for many years thinking about what I could do with it, how to make those important photographs accessible to the public. And I would like to find a way of integrating it into the narrative of this new project. So, I’ve been reaching out to historians in Poland, the United States, Germany and Austria, to get more information about the historic events surrounding the atrocity depicted in this album, and to try to find out who the people depicted in the photographs are.

From Left to right: Card catalog cabinets, video library and VHS tape from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Photos courtesy of Stephen Naron and Nick Porter.

Lucie: It sounds as if you anticipated my next question and, in a way, already answered it. In the SCVN team, we have been wondering whether you plan to focus on one main story or several of them in your next book project. Could you talk a bit more about how you envision working with multiple narratives?

Nora: Yes, I’m trying to look at my work less as illustrated biography and more as a philosophical reflection on themes that could include multiple narratives, also contradicting ones. This was the case in my last book, Diaries of War, about Ukraine and Russia, where I portrayed the voices of a Ukrainian woman and a Russian man, and even though the Russian man was anti-Putin, it is a contradictory narrative, and it clashes with the perspective of the Ukrainian protagonist. What I’m interested in as an artist and a writer is to bring out the complexities and the subtleties and focus on narratives that can be difficult to confront, because they’re uncomfortable or because they don’t fit into our conventional understanding of war or of the Holocaust.

What I’m interested in as an artist and a writer is to bring out the complexities and the subtleties and focus on narratives that can be difficult to confront, because they’re uncomfortable or because they don’t fit into our conventional understanding of war or of the Holocaust.

Lucie: This leads me to another question. In your understanding and in your practice, what do you see as particular strengths of the visual narrative when dealing with trauma and the topics that you mention?

Nora: For me, it’s very important to recognize the whole political history of illustration as a medium. It’s always been a political medium. It was the only visual medium that communicated political and social ideas before the advent of photography. We tend to forget that now. It is a political tool that shapes the way we think and feel or that hopefully opens up new perspectives because it is so visceral and so direct. And it can provide a very direct emotional entry point into narratives about war and memory and history in a way that I think classic textbooks aren’t able to. We understand that with movies—with movies, there’s no question. I mean, fiction films about the Second World War are very emotionally gripping, but with illustrated narratives, the general population wouldn’t necessarily recognize that medium as a powerful tool in the same way. I don’t know why that is given that for centuries it was such an important tool. I mean, if you think about illustrated church manuscripts, but also illustrated representations in other religions and cultures—illustrations were always used to inform the way we think about the world, but also to propagate, for instance, stereotypical ideas like antisemitic depictions in the Middle Ages.

So, while I really appreciate the political strength of the medium, I’m also aware that you have to treat the medium very sensitively and responsibly as an artist. I thought about that a lot when it comes to the depiction of violence. I’m somebody who really feels that it’s important to not avoid violence in images because we need to know what happened, for instance, during the Holocaust. If there hadn’t been any photographs taken at the time when the camps were liberated, our understanding of the Holocaust would be so much more limited. So, I think I’m really a proponent of showing images, of witnessing historical events, even if they’re hard to look at. But at the same time, there are many different ways of representing violence as an illustrator. It’s more a question of how rather than if you should show violence. But that is a component I think about a lot—what’s my responsibility as an illustrator to illuminate these subjects without being voyeuristic or sentimental. It’s sometimes a very fine line.

Illustrations from ‘On Tyranny Graphic Edition: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century’ by Nora Krug and Timothy Snyder, 2021.

But at the same time, there are many different ways of representing violence as an illustrator. It’s more a question of how rather than if you should show violence. But that is a component I think about a lot—what’s my responsibility as an illustrator to illuminate these subjects without being voyeuristic or sentimental. It’s sometimes a very fine line.

Lucie: You mentioned that as a researcher and illustrator working with the trauma of war and mass atrocities can be extremely challenging. Can you speak a little bit about how this might affect you, and also how do you take care of yourself during this process?

Nora: Unfortunately, I don’t reflect enough on how I should take care of myself, because I always focus on my sense of responsibility of dealing with these subjects rather than on how my research will make me feel. I think my curiosity is what drives me forward despite the difficulty of the subject matter. When I wrote Belonging, a lot of people said, oh, that was so brave. I never thought of it as brave. I always felt like I simply had to find out what happened. I had such a burning desire to understand war and why people fight wars and how we live with the trauma of war that everything else was pushed into the background. I know that’s problematic because I also do a lot of visual research and looking at those photos probably impacts me emotionally on some deep level.

As illustrators, we have to do a lot of visual research, which means you look at photographs of the Warsaw ghetto or other atrocities throughout history. I try to switch into a professional mode when I do that, but it probably weighs on me in ways that I’m not always aware of. At the same time, making books on these subjects is my way of dealing with all the terrible things that are happening in the world. It’s my way of staying sane because there’s a lot of anger, a lot of anxiety about what’s going on. And I feel like confronting this directly is my preferred way of handling those feelings. So, it’s in a way therapeutic, even though it can be challenging. But I probably should find better ways of dealing with the emotional repercussions.

Lucie: The archival work, which you engage in at the moment, is quite unique within the Survivor-Centered Visual Narrative project. Is archival work also new to you? And what differences do you see between this kind of work and listening to survivors face to face?

Nora: I’ve done a lot of archival work. I did a lot of archival research for Belonging when I was looking for my grandparents’ files from the time of the Nazi regime. I went to the local archive in my father’s village and looked at the police documents from between 1933 and 1945. I looked at some of the letters that were written after 1945 by Jewish emigres who wanted to know what happened to their houses and their property. So, I’ve done a lot of research in archives, not academic research, but research to look for personal narratives. I love that. I find it so exciting to stumble across these voices that would otherwise remain unheard and then bring them back to life. One thing that I find a bit challenging is that the interviews I’m watching are with people who have already passed away, so I can’t ask follow-up questions. Sometimes I have very different questions than the ones that the interviewers ask. That’s a challenge that I’m experiencing because I’m not the one asking the questions.

Pages from Nora Krug’s ‘Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home’, 2018.

A lot of the questions that are asked in these interviews are about the chronology of what happened where they were born, how they experienced anti-Semitism as a child, when they had to flee or hide or what camp they were in, how they escaped or how they survived. All of that is very important. But I would also want to know more about the emotional aspects. What did they go through emotionally at various points during the process, not only what happened to them.

Lucie: When we communicated prior to this interview, you mentioned that one of the central questions you’re exploring is whether it is ever possible to overcome the trauma of war. Do you feel any closer to reaching an answer after working for several months in the archives?

Nora: No. I mean, it’s also so individual. Like I said earlier, I think that everybody deals with it very differently. Some people, as you know, committed suicide. Some people were deeply depressed. One woman whose interview I watched was very interesting. She talked about how after the war she had a child, her first son, and how detached she felt. She felt basically incapable of showing anybody love. And that capacity to love seemed to have died the moment when she was separated from her family in the ghetto, and that was a moment when she basically became incapable of loving or expressing her love for anybody. After the war, she had a son, and she realized that she couldn’t give him what a mother under normal circumstances could give a child.

Thank you so much for your time, Nora, and for sharing your research and artistic experience with me. We are very excited to have you as part of our project and I am looking forward to hearing more about your book in 2026.

On February 27, SCVN research assistant Ghada met with curator Jakob Hoffmann to discuss the exhibition journey of But I Live. Remembering the Holocaust. The exhibition, co-curated by Jakob Hoffmann and Barbara Yelin, features the process of co-creation and original artwork by artists Barbara Yelin, Miriam Libicki, and Gilad Seliktar, produced for the graphic novel But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust, edited by Dr. Charlotte Schallié and based on interviews with Holocaust survivors Emmie Arbel, David Schaffer, and Nico and Rolf Kamp. Displaying original drawings, sketches, archival materials, and interviews with participants, the exhibition illuminates the process by which the book came into existence.

The interview with Jakob offers a closer look into his life and work, while inviting reflection on the concepts and challenges that arise at the intersection of first, artistic media such as graphic novels and film; second, social phenomena such as collective memory and mass atrocities; and third, human experience, particularly through the lens of survivors.

Ghada: Hello Jakob, thank you for taking the time to have this conversation today. Before getting into the details of the project, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? What do you do? Where are you based? What is the scope of your work?

Jakob: Yes, what can I say about myself? Well, I live here in Frankfurt am Main. I’m 60 years old, and I’ve got a proper regular job, which is working in the Scout movement. This is maybe a little bit unique, because most of the people who are involved in Scout are volunteers and young people. And I’m an old man, and I’m doing it as a job, but you could say I’m kind of a trainer doing projects with young people in the area around Frankfurt. This is my steady job that brings me some income and a lot of joy.

Jakob Hoffmann during the exhibition of ‘But I Live: Remembering the Holocaust’ exhibition in Dortmund, Germany, May 6, 2023. Photo credit: Max Mann.

My job does not have really anything to do with how I’m involved in SCVN, but maybe there are some parallels, because I’m always thinking about how to transfer certain political or cultural topics to young people and students.

I don’t know how exactly that happened, but maybe ten or fifteen years ago, I started getting interested in comics and graphic novels. And since I’m definitely not an artist or someone who can draw a straight line, it was very clear to me that if I want to get involved in this scene, I can do it by organizing things. So, I created a little series of events where I invited comic artists from all over the world.

I’m also into curating exhibitions. I started with a side project for contemporary art and then got the chance to do a bigger exhibition with Art for Children in the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt. This was a huge step forward, because, as a non-professional, it’s quite unique to get this chance. But I got it, and it was great, and I worked together with illustrators. Since then, I have done it from time to time.

I don’t know exactly when it was, but I did some exhibitions with comic artists, and that’s how Barbara asked me one day if I wanted to curate an exhibition on But I Live.

Ghada: I will use your last point to ask you to elaborate a little bit on your contribution to SCVN. Between 2022 and 2024, you co-curated and toured an exhibition of But I Live: Remembering the Holocaust. How did you first connect with the project? What inspired the creation of this exhibition?

Jakob: The comic scene in Germany, maybe the comics scene in most of the countries in the world except for perhaps France or Japan, is very well-connected and everybody knows each other. You don’t need an agent to get in contact with somebody else, and there is a strong interest in each other’s work. I’m not a comic artist, but since I invited a lot of people and published a comic magazine for kids, I’m in contact with many people, so it’s very hard to say when some things get started, because you always talk about projects, “Oh, let’s do this, let’s do that”.

In this case, I was talking quite frequently to Barbara Yelin. We had several events together , we met at festivals, and through our private friends. I don’t know exactly when she first told me about this project, about the life of Emmie Arbel, but I remember it was in the middle of COVID, when she called me in January 2022… No, no. It should be before then, maybe 2020, if it was at the beginning of COVID. No, it was 2022. But there was no COVID anymore. Well, you see, I’m very bad at remembering things.

Ghada: Maybe that’s why we need exhibitions, novels, and tangible materials? Because we need better memories? I’m just like you, it’s so hard for me to remember dates and names of people!

Jakob: Yeah, 2022. It was in January 2022, because we had a very short time to prepare this exhibition, so maybe I mixed things up. But Barbara called me—it was five or six months before that one big comic festival in Germany—and asked me: what do you think about offering an exhibition about But I Live for the Erlangen International Comic Salon? And I said, yeah, send me a PDF.

Then I saw the story, and other stories by Miriam and Gilad, and I was overwhelmed. We called Katja Rausch, from the festival in Erlangen, who gave us one of the best spots we could have there. However, we said let’s not limit it to the short exhibition during the festival. Let’s make it a little bigger, a little more durable, so that we have three months to show this beautiful artwork. This was the start. Then everything went very quickly from there.

Ghada: Can you give us a quick brief of what the exhibition consisted of content-wise for our readers who might not necessarily be familiar with previous posts and information that we’ve shared?

Jakob: Yeah, that’s a very good question, because, you know, it’s always the question, What? What would you show if you were doing an exhibition about a comic? What would you display? Because a comic is happy with itself as a book, and it doesn’t need an exhibition.

We first considered a traditional approach of showing original artwork. Yet, this is another tricky thing, because original artwork is not necessarily something that is done analog by hand. We got a beautiful mix in But I Live, because Gilad works strictly digitally, but Miriam and Barbara do analog studies. They work nearly completely with analog techniques, including watercolours, which is special. So, it was clear from the beginning that the exhibition had different components, but the main thing was to show original artwork that would give the visitor a strong impression regarding the three stories of the child survivors of the Holocaust.

We also decided to display studies, scribbles, sketchbooks, interviews, and research materials. At the time, the project had already produced three wonderful short films about the artists, and so the films were also shown. Of course, it’s very important to offer the audience some comics as well, a place where they can encounter the book, because it’s all about the book. The aim of the show is that people buy this book, take it home, and read it whole with all its strong components, especially since it’s not a traditional comic book. It also features very interesting essays from historians and so on.

Ghada: You mentioned the audience, and that’s precisely what I have been thinking about as well! Knowing that the exhibition has been in multiple cities, and I will not attempt to say their names because I will not pronounce them correctly. My question is, were there different conceptions for the different exhibits as they went to different places? Did you encounter any differences in public engagement? And finally, did you make any changes or specific adjustments?

Jakob: Yeah, I can tell there’s a lot to say about that, but I will try to keep it short. When we started planning for the exhibition, it was absolutely customized to the museum in Erlangen, which is a very special but limited place in a 200- or 300-year-old building. We had six very small rooms, and, in total, the space was not more than sixty square meters, which is very small for such an amount of material. But we grabbed the opportunity to classify the different materials accordingly: three rooms went to showcasing the three stories, one for introduction and orientation, another hosted screens to showcase portraits of artists and witnesses along a big map that displayed the itineraries of the survivors, and the last room displayed the network of the project, the epilogue and physical copies of the book.

And at that moment, we still hadn’t even thought about taking the exhibition to another place. But there was an important journalist from Germany, Andreas Platthaus, who wrote about it and said, “This is really something, this exhibition should travel”.

As such, before we even finished the first exhibition, we got two really good requests to show it in other places, and that’s what we did. We showed it in a small comic museum in Dortmund, then in Wiesbaden, which is close to Frankfurt, in a classical museum site. Later, we were asked to display the exhibition at the Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, a former concentration camp and the very place where Emmie Arbel was imprisoned. This was really something. Then the exhibition was displayed in another comic museum in Bavaria, Erika- Fuchs-Haus in Schwarzenbach.

And now, sharing new information, it will go to Bergen Belsen, the place where Emmie Arbel was liberated. This was the concentration camp where her mother died, and they decided to show it as well. So, as you can imagine, these are two totally different situations—showing the exhibition in a comic museum in the middle of a town with no certain historical background, versus a former concentration camp that was the setting of one of the stories in the book.

Ghada: Very interesting, it somehow gains a new meaning, doesn’t it? When you put the place in the context of the story, you feel that it takes on a new dimension.

Jakob: Absolutely. The opening in Ravensbrück, the former concentration camp, was on the liberation day of the concentration camp. There were hundreds of people, including former prisoners. It was really frightening in a good way. The context is totally different, but we also try to adapt the exhibition to the exhibitions spaces that are quite different as well. You have a classic white cube in Wiesbaden, which is very easy to play with. And then you have very small old rooms in Erlangen. And then you have the memorial space in Ravensbrűck, where you’re not allowed to put anything on walls, and you must hang everything. These are technical challenges that force us to find new solutions which is very interesting. In “Aber ich lebe” [But I Live] in Ravensbrück, Emmie Arbel was there. In Dortmund and Wiesbaden, we had interviews with the twins [Nico and Rolf Kamp] from the Netherlands whose story was told by Gilad. It keeps changing all the time. We also invite other comic artists, because it’s now a very big thing, doing comics in this way about historical issues.

Ghada: This is a beautiful transition to my question on how you envision the role of art and graphic storytelling in preserving and conveying memories of mass atrocities. What goals do you believe we achieve when we use art to address big issues such as social memory, history, group identity, and mass atrocities?

Jakob: It’s a big question, a philosophical one, and my opinion about it changes every day. Sometimes I think it’s the perfect medium to carry things that must be remembered—things that would be lost if we didn’t use art to preserve them. Yet, sometimes I think, no, it did not work. It’s always a process full of doubts. But we got very good responses to these exhibitions.

I guess comics have the advantage of allowing people to reflect on a story at their own pace, at their own speed. This is a difference from film, for example. When you watch a film, you’re totally passive.

Another challenging aspect of But I Live is the fact that it creates pictures of the concentration camps that do not exist yet, because we only have the official pictures by the Nazis, and they don’t show people in gas chambers, or all the killing and the atrocities. The pictures we have are only those taken by the perpetrators.

Comics, and maybe art, offer the chance to show what happened, while making it totally clear that this is not the exact way it happened, but that it could. Comics don’t pretend to present historical truth. Rather, they highlight that history always needs reconstruction, and this means there is nothing like objective truth about what happened.

I think that’s what art can do—bring the audience, like the visitors of an exhibition, to engage with the pictures and the story, but they must play their own role in the process. There is always a relation between the visitor and the objects we display.

Ghada: I may have not mentioned, but I am doing my PhD in philosophy, so these kinds of questions are at the core of my interests in participating in and contributing to this project!

Jakob: Yeah, like this idea for example, is informed by Walter Benjamin, who said that history is always in construction, not reconstruction, but construction. I guess art can make that very clear. Another important idea, which is a common notion about art, and especially comics, is that art makes the process easier, more accessible, when you approach history through pictures.

Ghada: I like to reflect on this informational dimension of art, focusing on the difference between getting information from art versus, for example, news or other formats. I tend to think that art speaks to us in the totality of our existence, that is in thinking, but also in feeling, in imagination and creativity. It taps into different aspects of us all at once.

Jakob: That is true on the one hand, but it’s also dangerous to use art to just put some emotion in a material or issue. Of course, this is something one must be careful about. Among the quality points of these comics in But I Live, is that they keep their distance, because the project is survivor-centered, not about manipulating the audience. It’s about keeping everything centered around the survivor, and how we can stay genuine and authentic about that.

Ghada: Beautiful. You spoke earlier about your work with Barbara, and I understand that there was a lot of collaborative work. I am curious about the role of collaboration in the making of projects like this exhibition. How does the collaborative nature of this work help advance the project?

Jakob: It is absolutely necessary. It’s something that can never be enough, because in such projects, there are tons of information you haven’t read or worked with. And it’s the same with the connections to the artists, or with other people who are involved in the project. There you always have the feeling it’s not enough, but it’s absolutely necessary to get in touch with them, to talk to them and to understand what they do on a personal level as well.

What we did for this exhibition—something I will also do in my upcoming exhibition that involves some people from SCVN— is doing interviews with the artists and bringing them into the exhibition so that you hear from them about their processes and struggles, and how they make their decisions. There are a lot of decisions to make as an artist when it comes to showing things, and this is what I’m interested in.

We work together with some graphic designers, so we always have a digital version of the exhibition. We show it to the artists, discuss it with Charlotte, and eventually we must make the final decision as curators. This is a very democratic way to bring in a lot of perspectives. The collaboration is very close, beautiful, and it’s the most interesting thing about the process.

Ghada: Wrapping up our conversation and looking forward, what is next for SCVN in terms of exhibitions? I know that you will be creating an exhibition for the new SCVN project, which moves beyond the Holocaust and includes other genocides and mass atrocities from Rwanda, Iraq, Syria, Canada, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Can you speak about any plans for the next exhibits?

Jakob: An upcoming exhibit will take place in Wiesbaden again, opening on May 21. We open this exhibition with four comic artists, three of whom are involved in the SCVN project: Tobi Dahmen, who worked on Akram’s story from Syria and whose work will be shown for the first time; Nora Krug, who’s working on a project about archives in Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive, and we will display some work from her book; and there is Birgit Weyhe, who is in the working process for an upcoming comic about a young woman from Iraq. Charlotte will also be invited.

In November, the exhibit is set to travel to another museum in Constance, in the very south of Germany. We have a current discussion about whether it will also go to Erlangen in 2026.

In general, there are eight or nine artists working now on graphic novels about genocides worldwide [on the project]. Fantastic artists dealing with shocking issues. The question is, what will happen to these stories? Will there be anything beyond the fact that they will be published, hopefully in different languages and in different countries? So, Charlotte and the team came up with the idea of creating not a digital exhibition, but a portfolio which can be easily adapted in different places all over the world. Something like a core set of pictures, information, and layouts which can be printed, for example, on location, but in a certain, outstanding quality. The concept aims to, on the one hand, guarantee that there will be a high-profile exhibition or a good-quality exhibition, and on the other hand—the charming argument of course—to enable people and institutions, for example schools which don’t have much money, to display exhibitions in a way that is possible.

I’m very much into organizing events, public readings, and exhibitions, because I love bringing this fantastic artwork to people in a very direct way, to invite the artists and show original artwork. But I also understand the need to make the material more accessible to institutions.

Ghada: My last question is from a research process perspective. I am wondering how you approach the weight of the material at hand. Despite that we are dealing with comics and artistic material, the content is heavy. How do you deal with this aspect of the project?

Jakob: Oh, that’s hard to say. I usually don’t do it twenty-four hours a day. I have my job, my family, and my nonsense stuff like watching Netflix series or soccer on TV. I also have a lot of friends and family I can talk to throughout the process. This is helpful. I think comics, as I already said, offer you the chance to keep a distance. And the artists I worked with are very considerate not to overwhelm the people they are working with. But to be honest, I cannot answer completely because I don’t know how much impact it [this work] has on me. And I think there is some kind of professional distance I try to keep. Sometimes I distract myself and do other things. Actually, there is a beautiful picture about this in But I Live, in the story of Emmy Arbel, who worked with Barbara. After telling her the most horrible stuff you can think of, she says: “Now it’s time to stop, and I must go to the computer and play my solitaire game.” So, the question is much more an issue for the victims of these tough stories. We are in a comfortable position in not having experienced what they did.

Ghada: These were the questions that I had. Did I miss any question that you wanted to address?

Jakob: Not now. Thank you for these questions. It has been a pleasure. As I already said, it’s not so easy for me to answer in English, because sometimes some words are missing, and you try to paraphrase in an awkward way.

Ghada: It’s also my everyday struggle, so I understand!

Jakob: What is your first language?

Ghada: It’s Lebanese Arabic, which is my first language. Then we learn French as a second language, and English as a third. You can imagine me trying to phrase all those philosophical ideas in English but getting the words in Arabic first. Then I have to translate, but that is not always a practical thing to do.

Jakob: Well, you are into at least two other beautiful languages. I always envy people who can speak French. It’s very hard for me not to be able to speak French, because France is really the best country for comics. Yeah, and Arabic. I don’t understand Arabic, but it sounds very nice. Is it complicated?

Ghada: It is… It is usually considered harder to learn than some other languages, especially let’s say English, French, and Spanish, which share some vocabulary and grammatical structures, whereas Arabic has a completely different structure and a different alphabet. But that’s the beauty of diversity among people and languages!

Jakob: That’s a very good last word, I guess, that beauty of diversity.

Thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise, Jakob, and we look forward to your next exhibit with the project!