Opening comic book exhibition ‘Picturing the Unimaginable’

Eighty-year-old comic book

The project got underway when Bas Kortholt, a researcher at Remembrance Centre Camp Westerbork, cartoonist Erik de Graaf and NIOD researcher Kees Ribbens were inspired by a comic strip Ribbens discovered some time ago in the United States. In an attempt to make somewhat imaginable what was going on in the heart of Europe, August M. Froehlich depicted what happened after the arrival of a deportation train as early as 1944. His comic was published in early 1945 while most of the German death camps were still in full operation.

‘Picturing the Unimaginable’

After the discovery of the American comic strip, the idea arose to explore how contemporary cartoonists would depict the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes today. The result is ten comic strips, which form the heart of the project. In the exhibition, which after Westerbork travels on to Kazerne Dossin in Belgium and then to Gedenkstätte Neuengamme in Germany, the cartoon drawings are contextualised by historical artefacts, special audio-visual excerpts from both experts and eyewitnesses of the horrors, information about the creative process and the motivation of the cartoonists.

As this is an international collaboration, the graphic novel will be published in four languages by publisher Scratch Books. The exhibition will be on display at Westerbork Memorial until 1 September. More information about the opening on Friday 19 July can be found on the website of Westerbork Memorial.