We’ll Soon Be Home Again
Jessica Bab Bonde & Peter Bergting
- Original Title
- Vi kommer snart hem igen
- Published
- Natur & Kultur, Stockholm 2018
- Genre
- Graphic novels
- Pages
- 99
- Rights Sold
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- Jessica Bab Bonde, Natur & Kultur, Peter Bergting, Vi kommer snart hem igen, We'll Soon be Home Again
We’ll Soon Be Home Again
Jessica Bab Bonde & Peter Bergting
”We were showered and our hair shaved off. That was the last time I saw mom and my younger sisters Magdalena and Judith. Mom was 41 years then. My sisters were 14 and 12 years old.” Elisabeth Kischinowsky
Six people’s testimonies on the Holocaust are portrayed in comic strip form. Some of them were children then, and are still alive to tell what happened. What happened to them and their families. What they felt. How they survived. What they lost.
They speak about malnourishment, missed education, families torn apart, and their first meeting with a new home – and how you keep on living, despite it all.
Jessica Bab Bonde and Peter Bergting have, based on survivor’s stories, created an important book. The visual storytelling makes the book accessible, despite its difficult subject. Beyond the testimonies, there is also a timeline, a dictionary and a teaching manual.
A book that opens up for discussions about the most difficult subject matters: about escape, war, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. It suits children and young adults from 11 years.
Jessica Bab Bonde lives a Jewish life with her family in Stockholm. Her existence in Stockholm is a direct consequence of earlier generations’ escape from persecution. She works as a literary agent and has many years’ experience from the publishing world.
Peter Bergting is an award-winning comic book creator, illustrator and author. He has, among other, made covers for books by J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien.
- Press voices
“Holocaust deniers appear more brazen than ever before on the internet. We’ll Soon Be Home Again contrasts this with the testimonies of survivors: a masterpiece. (…) this is a harrowing collection of memories, a great graphic novel, and a history lesson that reaches young readers more directly than a school book. (…) Bergting masters this perfectly, mixing childish naivety with the nightmare of walking skeletons, contrasting idyll and sadness, and it's never too naturalistic nor too playful.” Stuttgarter Zeitung
“The texts are short, sober, they simply describe the observations of the stunned, shocked children. And suddenly all the mechanisms that have already been heard countless times become important again (…) Bergting / Bonde sensitively find new narrative paths (…), text and images cleverly complement each other.” Der Spiegel
“An indispensable book about the holocaust
/…/ Who better to depict the completely incomprehensible and systematic cruelty of genocide than a child who was there? The form of the graphic novel for children about 9-15 years of age is genius and obvious (as genius things usually are). Although one by now is well informed about the extermination of Jews and the Nazis’ ideas, the quintessence is still unimaginable. The author and the seven survivors manage to paint a picture of the improbable of any human being wanting to hurt another so badly, and in such an elaborately evil way. The entire book centers around the question of human value, and as always: How was it possible? In the case of the children, there are more dimensions to it: that your teacher openly mocks you and the wish for you to one day disappear, that a neighbor takes your money, or that you have to go out to buy yellow paper by yourself to make the Star of David you are forced to wear. It’s an indispensable book that should be mandatory in all schools, and in all workplaces too for that matter.”
- Jenny Byström, Folkbladet- Awards
Nominated for the August Prize 2018
The Jury's motivation:
"Is it possible to write poetry after Auschwitz? Is it possible to illustrate graphic novels after the Holocaust? The graphic novel Vi kommer snart hem igen (We’ll Soon Be Home Again) tells the same story over and over again. The walk towards death, and the logic of the Holocaust, where in the end there are no words, stories or poetry. But against this, the stories of the survivors shine through the panels as fantastic exceptions. It’s great graphic novel art. The answer is yes."