Barbara Yelin speaks about Emmie Arbel’s Illustrated Story of the Fragility of Freedom
Organised in response to the 2024 Holocaust Memorial Day theme “The Fragility of Freedom”, artist Barbara Yelins speaks about her collaboration with Emmie Arbel.
Whilst allied liberators freed Holocaust survivors from the physical imprisonment of concentration camps, the prisoners then found themselves alone, often unable to return home, and having to move to a new country, learn a new language and rebuild their lives from scratch. They had to rebuild new lives with the painful absence of family members and friends. Such was the experience of Emmie Arbel, who was five when the Nazis had deported her and her family from their home in the Netherlands. Liberated at the age of seven-and-a-half, her start into a new life as an orphan confronted her with new painful experiences. Artist Barbara Yelin finds sensitive and powerful ways to tell Emmie’s story of the fragility of freedom as a moving graphic novel.
You can view a recording of the lecture here.