LSSL 5385: Book 21

Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home

By Nora Krug

** Great Graphic Novel for Teens **

Krug, N. (2018). Belonging: a German reckons with home and history. New York, NY: Scribner.

Nora Krug writes a graphic memoir depicting her journey of trying to discover her Heimat and how to come to terms with her German heritage. She begins by sharing that she came to New York City from Berlin to study, and almost immediately dealt with German stereotypes. This wasn’t anything new for her, but I imagine she had hoped that America might be more evolved. When Nora was growing up the war was present around her but went unacknowledged. From a young age she felt shame for being German. She would try to understand the atrocities committed by her own people but she came to terms that it can’t and shouldn’t be forgiven. Her classmates and her often visited concentration camp museums on field trips and would feel a collective guilt about what their people had done. She constantly struggled with being German, never really wanted to learn about her culture and heritage, and trying to find her sense of Heimat. She ends her first chapter with a thought provoking question, “How do you know who you are, if you don’t understand where you come from?”

Even after Nora had lived in New York City for several years she still found herself trying to hide her accent, and continued to deal with the blowback of being German. Nora married a Jewish man and still felt German shame. She would look at flea markets and antique stores to buy things that reminded her of Germany and would reads books over wartime history in German to try and gain a better understanding of what happened. In search of Heimat, she attended German groups, parade, and festivals. She would feel a range of emotions at not being able to identify with her culture. Nora visited Germany in 2014, and realizes she needs to go back to the beginning to discover Heimat. For her that means going back to her hometown and learning more about her mother and father’s families and their hometowns.

Every year her family would visit Italy, and on one trip they come upon a German military cemetery. Her father goes off on his own, and they later find out he was looking for his brother’s grave. His brother died at 18 fighting in the S.S. Army, and her father had never met him. He was born a few years after his brother had died, was named after his brother, and expected to fill his brother’s shoes. That was the closest her father had ever been to his brother. She always associated her uncle with war and death, and the fact that he was one of Hitler’s soldiers.

Nora reflects on the fact that her mother grew up in a stage of oblivion, and it wasn’t until she was 16 that she came across the horrors of concentration camps in a magazine. Her mother’s parents never talked about their youth or shared any stories about their lives. Nora has a pocket watch of her grandfather’s that he had instructed her mother to give to her on her 16^th birthday. He died when she was 11, and after that she had no living grandparents. From talking to her mother and aunt she’s able to piece together parts of her grandfather’s life, but is always left wondering if it’s true or just postwar family fantasy.

In her fifth chapter, Nora outlines a fragmented history of Kulsheim, which depicts the persecution of Jew for hundreds of years in that town. Her father’s father had died when he was a baby, and he had been known for being one of the wealthiest farmers. He knows very little about his family, and is estranged from his older sister. Her father was left in the care of a neglectful and absent mother, and as a result had a difficult childhood.

Growing up her parents kept everything about their families that they had in a shoebox kept in a drawer. On one of her visits she takes it back with her to Brooklyn to try and get some answers about her family and their role in the war. After posting pictures of her grandfather in uniform on a forum she is relieved to find out that he was low on the totem pole in the S.S. army. She learns that towards the end of the war he might have been a POW in Belgium but it doesn’t add up details she found in an identify card of his. It’s hard for her to know what to believe, but if he was indeed a POW she feels comforted by the fact that he was punished for being a German soldier.

Her father and aunt haven’t been on speaking terms since before Nora was born, but he told her Annemarie would be the only who could tell her anything about her uncle. She finds an email address for her cousin Michael, reaches out, and learns that he didn’t know she existed. Michael agrees that it would be good to have an impartial meeting of the new generation. Her father offers to drive her, and reveals that he never asked his mother about the war or the Jews that used to live in his hometown. He had never felt a personal connection to the war, and he too had a hard time defining his Heimat.

Nora is still searching to find out more about her grandfather, and her Aunt Karin is enthusiastic to dig deeper too. They reach out to his brother Edwin’s granddaughter and she sends him a package containing letters he had written home to his family. Edwin wrote from the land of fathomless forests, and with each letter he was more disheartened that he had to fight and be away from home. His family received a letter stating Edwin didn’t return to his company after combat, and were inconclusive on his whereabouts. For the first time Nora felt her family’s loss, and felt the gap between her and her grandfather shrinking. Edwin was never found, his wife never declared him dead so then was unable to collect war widow’s pension, and never remarried. In 2009, his grandchildren were notified by the Red Cross that even a hundred years later they were evaluating archives and would continue to exhaust all possibilities to find answers for those missing.

In her father’s hometown she searches archives for information before gathering the courage to visit her aunt. She finds a handful of results about her father’s family; a Christmas post card, police report about her great grandfather, military questionnaire, confirmation of her uncle being in Hitler Youth, index of fallen soldiers, letter by her aunt of land sold, and a letter informing the family of her uncle’s death. The letter brought her closer than ever to uncle and gave her answers regarding his death.

Her mother felt strongly that her father wasn’t a Nazi supporter, and didn’t support the resistance because they had a small child. Nora needs stronger proof though, and visits the archives to look at his military file. In his file, she discovers that her grandfather had lied to his children, and he was in fact a member of the Nazi party. In a set of questions he filled out he admits to being a follower, Mitlaufer, someone who lacks moral stance or courage. It’s hard for Nora to bear reading and learning of her grandfather’s weak-mindedness. Her grandfather was an in-between man by voting with the Social Democrats and being a member of the Nazi party. In a letter to the mayor at the time, her grandfather reveals that he forced to join the Nazi party, and never held an office or wore the Nazi uniform. Once again Nora is left with the sense of not knowing what to believe is true, but after reading the last two testimonial affirming his innocence she finally believes that he wasn’t truly a part of the Nazi party.

Nora spends a few days in Kulsheim without her father, and meets several people that help her unravel her family’s past. A local historian, Egon, fills her in on the town’s past and gifts her with a family tree going all the way back to 1732. She meets Hans who has been conducting interviews and plans to have a museum of Kulsheim’s Jewish history, and he introduces her to Theo. Theo was a childhood friend of her aunts and remembered her uncle. Hans also connects her to Wanda, her father’s cousin’s widow, who says she looks like a Geier and immediately makes her feel at home. Nora feels as if everyone knows where she belongs except herself; geographically, historically, and genetically. Wanda further reveals the rough childhood her father had, and that who he believes is his father might not be true.

Nora is able to track down the man who wrote her grandfather’s last testimonial and convinced her of his innocence. Walter shares with her all that he knows, and tells her that there are still good things about German culture. He tells her that Germans suffered too, and paid a lot in reparations. Nora finally accepts that her knowledge of her family will have limits, and she won’t unearth all the truth about them. Walter tells her that she shouldn’t feel guilty and she finally begins to feel some peace about being German.

Nora returns to Germany and finally has the courage to meet her aunt. Annemarie answers all the questions that still remain about her father’s family. Her aunt had prepared for Nora’s visit and collected her uncle’s photographs, letters from the frontlines, and his obituary. Nora wonders what her family’s life would’ve been like if her uncle had survived the war, and who they would’ve been as a family if the war had never happened.

A year later Nora begins to move on from the revelations she found about her family’s past and is comforted by family heirlooms sent to her. Her father visits his hometown again, meets his niece and nephew, but states that he has no reason to see is sister again. Nora applies for American citizenship, and is asked the same question her grandfather was asked years ago – was she a member of the Nazi Party from 1933-1945? She reflects on the fact that they answered the question differently than one another. She ends her memoir with a hint to readers that she’s expecting a child.

Nora Krug’s graphic memoir Belonging grapples with her German heritage and her need to uncover where her family landed politically during World War II. She has dealt with shame of being German for most of her life, and never really connected with her culture and heritage. Most of us these days, like Nora, want to track down our family trees and ancestry, but hers goes a bit deeper. Nora dealt with German stereotypes her entire life and needed to know where her family lied in terms of the Nazi party. Her illustrations throughout make her memoir seem more like a scrapbook of her family’s past, and the reader is intrigued to find our her family’s past right along with her. I enjoyed her things German definitions and flea market finds throughout her chapters and definitely learned more about wartime history in Germany.

Other Books by Nora Krug: