REMEMBER US TO LIFE

A journey of self-discovery.

Growing up in Sweden, Rubin Dranger could always turn to her aunt, Susanne, for emotional support. “She wasn’t just my aunt but also my grown-up friend and protector,” writes Rubin Dranger. “When I was miserable and felt abandoned, it was Susanne who crawled under the bed to comfort me.” Susanne also gave Rubin Dranger a copy of Art Spiegelman’s landmark book Maus, instilling in her niece a love of graphic novels and an interest in their Jewish past. And so it was a shock when Susanne, suffering from depression, took her own life. Another shock came when Rubin Dranger learned that Susanne’s name was on a Swedish register of Jews and Nazi opponents that was supplied to Nazis during World War II. In 1997, those names were found on 3,000 cards hidden behind the wall of a late university lecturer who had been a Nazi, then a member of the right-wing Sweden Democrats. In Rubin Dranger’s poignant and often sorrowful graphic memoir, one sees how these events helped motivate the author to know more about her family history and how, along the way, her eyes were opened to some Swedes’ complicity during the war. As a friend in Israel puts it, “The first generation were quiet, the second generation felt they couldn’t ask, and now the third generation tries to find out what happened.” Thanks to her dogged research, Rubin Dranger finds out a lot. She details it—her travels, her encounters with antisemitism, the sweeping journeys of her ancestors, her doubts about creating the book—in tender illustrations set against old photos and postcards. “On some level,” she reasons with great compassion, her book “illustrates that all people are connected—we are all part of the same story.”

A beautifully introspective account of a Jewish author learning about her roots—and a dark side of Swedish history.