Survivors of the Holocaust: True Stories of Six Extraordinary Children

In this graphic novel repackaging of an animation series created in 2014 and produced for BBC Learning, six Holocaust survivors narrate their experiences in unsparing terms. Whittingham’s angular images—a hybrid of German Expressionism and contemporary vector art—depict the fear and horror they endured as Jewish children and teenagers. The survivors’ recollections of seeing their frantic parents powerless in the face of an inexorable force (Nazis are depicted as brutal, often larger-than-life automatons) is particularly searing: in many images, the characters run in fear or sit with devastating loneliness after being separated forever from a loved one. “Nobody ever said, I’ll explain what happened to you,” says Suzanne, a Parisian Jew with curly red hair who went from “a lovely life. It was a cultured life” to being hidden and abused after her parents were taken away and murdered. The narratives often end abruptly, gnawing at the heart; an afterword includes photos of the now-elderly survivors and brief descriptions of their achievements—including, most hearteningly, grandchildren. Ages 10–up. (Oct.)■