Barbara Yelin – Illustratör

Shortlisted - 2023 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Reality-Based Work.An intimate co-creation of three graphic novelists and four Holocaust survivors, But I Live consists of three illustrated stories based on the experiences of each survivor during and after the Holocaust.David Schaffer and his family survived in Romania due to their refusal to obey Nazi collaborators. In the Netherlands, brothers Nico and Rolf Kamp were separated from their parents and hidden by the Dutch resistance in thirteen different places. Through the story of Emmie Arbel, a child survivor of the Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, we see the lifelong trauma inflicted by the Holocaust.To complement these hauntingly beautiful and unforgettable visual stories, But I Live includes historical essays, an illustrated postscript from the artists, and personal words from each of the survivors.As we urgently approach the post-witness era without living survivors of the Holocaust, these illustrated stories act as a physical embodiment of memory and help to create a new archive for future readers. By turning these testimonies into graphic novels, But I Live aims to teach new generations about racism, antisemitism, human rights, and social justice.

Shortlisted - 2023 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Reality-Based WorkAn intimate co-creation of three graphic novelists and four Holocaust survivors, But I Live consists of three illustrated stories based on the experiences of each survivor during and after the Holocaust.David Schaffer and his family survived in Romania due to their refusal to obey Nazi collaborators. In the Netherlands, brothers Nico and Rolf Kamp were separated from their parents and hidden by the Dutch resistance in thirteen different places. Through the story of Emmie Arbel, a child survivor of the Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, we see the lifelong trauma inflicted by the Holocaust.To complement these hauntingly beautiful and unforgettable visual stories, But I Live includes historical essays, an illustrated postscript from the artists, and personal words from each of the survivors.As we urgently approach the post-witness era without living survivors of the Holocaust, these illustrated stories act as a physical embodiment of memory and help to create a new archive for future readers. By turning these testimonies into graphic novels, But I Live aims to teach new generations about racism, antisemitism, human rights, and social justice.

Gerda stands at the window of her nursing home, looking up at the stars. A simple question has been haunting her for years, but until now she’s managed to avoid it: has her life been a happy one?As Gerda negotiates the degradations of old age and the indignity of being cared for by strangers, the past begins to seep into the present. Memories sweep over her. She remembers her life as a bespectacled schoolgirl, bullied for being smart. She remembers her ambition to enter the closed and overwhelmingly male field of astrophysics. And she remembers, most powerfully, that one summer – the summer of her life – during which she would be forced to make the most difficult decision of all: between her career and the love of her life.The Summer of Her Life is a poetic, touching and profound graphic novel that grapples with questions that are too often left unasked. What is it like to spend your twilight years in a home? How do you know whether you’ve made the right choices? And what does it mean, in the end, to be happy?