Throughout her investigation, Krug hopes to find evidence to exonerate them, (and there are times when that seems possible), but she is impelled to continue until she uncovers all the available documents. With both courage and trepidation, she returns to Germany to unearth the truth about the relatives she never met, her maternal grandfather and uncle, an SS soldier mortally wounded in Italy. Nora Krug has fashioned something more than a book it is an experience that draws you in and changes your perception of accountability and identity.īorn in Karlsruhe, Germany decades after World War II, but living in the United States as an adult, the author harbors questions about her opaque family history and its members participation in Nazi organizations during the Third Reich. Krug’s book is a worthwhile journey toward a deeper understanding of one’s responsibility to repair what has been destroyed.īelonging is a compelling and explosively creative mixture of dense imagery, narrative memoir, exacting historical research, and painful honesty. We watch her forgo quick moral judgments and come to the compassionate realization that war is hell for everybody. She asks how to reckon with guilt and responsibility, and how to own what is yours - inherited or chosen, uncomfortable or delightful. She digs into stories about life and death, survival and murder, action and inaction, participation and witnessing. Through illustrations, collages, and text, Krug reveals an increasingly comprehensive narrative of what was and what may have been.

She visited neighboring towns and scoured regional archives to painstakingly piece together facts about her family and their neighbors, both Christian and Jewish.įrame by frame, Krug illustrates the complexities of her family relationships how deeply the events of World War II and the Holocaust continue to affect people today and the courage it takes to probe (and overcome) the rifts and disconnections caused by events that occurred two generations ago. They might have been offenders, or maybe bystanders, but were never willing to share their memories of those years.Īfter happenstance encounters with Holocaust survivors that made her realize how much there was to discover about her family’s past, Krug decided to return to her ancestral village.

In this graphic memoir, illustrator and writer Nora Krug explores what it means to have German grandparents who may or may not have been complicit in the atrocities of the Nazi regime.

Belonging by nora krug