Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance

Ari Richter's graphic novel Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance is a third-generation Holocaust memoir. Richter is the grandson and great-grandson of Holocaust survivors, and he begins the work by distancing himself from his grandparents’ Jewish experiences in Europe. Like his parents, Richter “washed himself in a purifying bath of pop culture” with the express purpose of emulating Jewish celebrities’ for their ability to “cleanse our other-ness to become honest-to-God, red-blooded Americans” (pp. 14–15).Richter's sense of accomplishment at having integrated into American society was upended in October 2018 when, in the wake of the terror attack on Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Congregation, he realized that “assimilation plus prosperity” was not “a shield from oppression” (p. 31). This realization leads Richter to reexamine his familial tree and try to understand the historical and contemporary roots of antisemitism. Richter learns, for the first time, the magnitude of the Holocaust on his own family: one great-grandparent, two great-great-grandparents, twenty-two great-aunts and uncles, and twenty cousins all perished during the Holocaust.One of the central concerns of Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz is the notion of inherited memory and whether trauma can span across generations. To what extent, Richter wonders, is he the inheritor of the traumas that were inflicted upon his family? Beyond the personal traumas in the Holocaust are also the traumas of Jewish history that are woven into his identity as a Jew: pogroms, expulsions, massacres, and forced ghettoization. Richter offers a powerful visualization of these traumas in the form of a black tree whose branches are all bereft of leaves with each branch representing a different family member whose life was cut short in the Holocaust. The roots of the tree are also illustrated in black and grey, with each one symbolizing a different communal trauma inflicted upon the Jewish people. Richter's family tree serves as a form of visual testimony to the traumatic legacy that he has inherited and which has shaped him, even if he did not always know it.Concurrent with Richter's detailing of his family's past is an exploration of how learning about that past has affected him as an artist. Whereas he was once uncomfortable publicly identifying himself as a Jew, in the wake of learning about his past, he is now proud to produce art that demonstrates his complex relationship with his Jewish identity. In a scene reminiscent of Bruce Banner transforming into the Incredible Hulk, Richter illustrates himself transforming into a bearded and yarmulke-wearing older Jew who proclaims: “we must preserve our history from these damned antisemites!!!” (p. 58). Art becomes a weapon that Richter can use to ensure that his family's story is not forgotten and through which he can explore what his Judaism means to him.A recurring artistic technique that is woven throughout Richter's graphic memoir is the use of photographs. Readers encounter actual photographs of Richter's family, illustrations of photographs, and also doctored photographs that visually show who survived and who perished by blacking out the faces of those murdered by the Nazis. Richter's creative use of photographs is not unique in Holocaust graphic memoirs, with photographs playing a prominent role in works like Art Spiegelman's Maus (1991); Carol Isaacs's The Wolf of Baghdad (2020), which also uses the blackout technique; and Michel Kichka's Second Generation (2016). As I have noted elsewhere, “the photograph testifies to the veracity of the past traumas and to the ability—or necessity—to preserve those narratives, legacies, memories, and histories through the retelling of the stories.”1 In Richter's case, they help him concretize his new understanding of his family and of the world, giving him something to grasp onto when the stories of those who perished cannot be told.A further work that Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz has similarities to is Amy Kurzweil's graphic memoir Flying Couch (2016). In her retelling of her grandmother's story of survival during the Holocaust, Kurzweil interpolates her own reflections and interpretations. Richter produces something similar in his graphic memoir with his great-grandfather's story. In panels that include transcriptions of recorded testimony alongside Richter's visual interpretations, readers are able to see how Richter has made his family's story of trauma his own through the creative license afforded to the artist. Richter's observations offer readers insight into his creative process and how art served as a mediator for the trauma. He writes, “my great-grandfather's testimony from Buchenwald haunted me . . . its vignettes looped in my head, morphing and evolving, ever more horrible, until I committed them to paper. Visualizing the scenes actually put my mind at peace. Because drawing creates a kind of memory that can be filed away for later—out of sight, out of mind” (p. 88). Art, Richter indicates, offers a salve to the inherited traumas that he has as a Jew and as the descendant of Holocaust survivors.As a memoir, Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz offers readers more than just the stories of Richter's ancestors alongside his journey learning those stories. The work includes numerous panels that show how Richter has absorbed the lessons of the past in order to critique the present. Richter's criticisms are targeted at what he sees as a rise in totalitarian politics both in America and in Poland. In America, this is primarily construed in right-wing rhetoric under Donald Trump against minority populations. He raises a similar concern in Poland, except there, it has to do with the impact of the 2018 legislation making it illegal to accuse Poland of complicity in the Holocaust. When he visits Auschwitz, he feels uncomfortable. He believes that in response to the legislation's ban, Polish Christians’ suffering at the site became the dominant narrative (despite Polish victims’ constituting the minority), so that that the Jewish experience there was glossed over and the space commodifying the Jewish traumas that occurred there was minimized. During his tour, he notices that his guide spends more time speaking about Polish victims at Auschwitz than Jewish ones alongside the choice to not even visit the Jewish memorial site. These and other experiences at Auschwitz leave him feeling uncomfortable in the space, so much so that he vows to never return.Irrespective of whether one agrees with Richter's readings of American or Polish politics, the graphic novel offers a new model for third-generation Holocaust graphic memoirs. Richter's ability to blend together his own evolving understanding of what it means to be Jewish after the Holocaust and how he then sees the world through this lens offers something new in Holocaust graphic novels. The interweaving together of familial, communal, and personal narratives to offer a politicized reading of the present is what I most appreciated in Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz. I look forward to reading subsequent works by Richter in the future.