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.

Ginette Kolinka is a 98-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Since the 2000s, she has been an ＂ambassador for memory＂ who speaks to young people about her experiences in the Shoah. In 2019, she and Marie Ruggieri published Return to Birkenau (Grasset), as well as A Happy Life in 2023. Jean-David Morvan is a comic book writer fascinated by issues relating to war. His work includes an adaptation of Dorgelès’s Les Croix de Bois with Facundo Percio (Albin Michel), the Irena series with Tréfouël and Evrard (Glénat) and Madeleine, résistante with Madeleine Riffaud and Dominic Bertail (Aire Libre). For the latter, he was awarded the René Goscinny Prize for best scriptwriter. Victor Matet is a journalist and presenter at France Info. He produced several reports on Ginette Kolinka before co-creating a comic strip about her. Ricard Efa is a self-taught comic book artist. He has published around twenty titles since 2001. He is particularly known for biographical comics such as Django (Aire Libre) and Degas ou Monet (Le Lombard). The latter earned him a nomination for an Eisner Award in 2018. He lives in Barcelona. Cesc F. Dalmases, born in Sabadell (Barcelona), is the author of various comic strips, including adaptations of such novels as The Bridge of the Jews (Marti Gironell), Victus (Alvert Sanchez Piñol), and The Immortal Pyramid (Javier Sierra). His works have been translated into several languages. He often works on sports-themed comics, like Barcelona: The School of Dreams and Barcelona: Eternal Barcelona at Dupuis.