The Holocaust in Visual Storytelling
Ten talented contemporary comic book creators from different backgrounds and ages from the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, among others, collaborated on the comic book exhibition Picturing the Unimaginable. From their own perspective, they created a story in the context of three former Nazi concentration camps from their (neighbouring) country: Neuengamme in Germany, the Dossin Barracks in Belgium and camp Westerbork in the Netherlands.
The ten contemporary comics are at the heart of the project. In the exhibition, the drawings are provided with context by historical objects, special (audiovisual) fragments from both experts and eyewitnesses of the horrors, information about the creative process and the motivation of the illustrators.
Eighty-year-old comic
At the heart of Picturing the Unimaginable is an eighty-year-old comic strip discovered some time ago in an American archive. In an attempt to make somewhat imaginable what was going on in the heart of Europe, August M. Froehlich depicted in 1944 what happened after the arrival of a deportation train. The comic was published in early 1945 while most of the German death camps were still in full operation.
Collaboration
Picturing the Unimaginable concerns a collaboration between Kazerne Dossin and (inter)national partners Remembrance Centre Camp Westerbork, Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and publisher Scratch Books.
The exhibition will be on display at Remembrance Centre Camp Westerbork until 1 September 2024, after which it will travel on to Kazerne Dossin and then to Gedenkstätte Neuengamme in Germany.
