Adieu Birkenau: Ginette Kolinka’s Story of Survival

The graphic memoir of Ginette Kolinka, Holocaust survivor, educator, and “ambassador for the memory” of Auschwitz-Birkenau

It is April 1944. Nineteen-year-old Ginette Kolinka arrives at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Her father and little brother are immediately gassed. Ginette is selected as a worker. She survives.

It is October 2020. Ninety-five-year-old Ginette takes advantage of a lull in the COVID-19 epidemic to accompany a group visiting Birkenau one last time. As a farewell, she brings with her a journalist, France Info’s Victor Matet, and a comic strip writer, J-D Morvan.

From this trip a comic book is born. Ginette tells of her life before the war, how she discovered she was Jewish, how her family fled Paris before she and her father were denounced. She tells the story of the camp; completely, honestly, without seeking pity. We see her today, how she still shares her story with the world, how she still stands and bears witness.

Ginette tells everything with her trademark liveliness and biting humor. We often laugh, and sometimes we shudder. Because the story she tells is ours, too.