![]() It is an amazing quest, and a brave one, to go from a comfortable perch in New York, married to a half-Jewish man, to seek out the Nazis in the closet. ![]() ![]() In the course of this jam-packed scrapbook of a memoir, she rips off bandages, uncovers some truths, and raises many questions, some of which, necessarily, go unanswered. There is little subtlety in this apt metaphor for Krug’s search into the history of her family and its potential Nazi past. It is the best of bandages, covering the injury and guaranteed not to come off until the wound is healed, but it hurts like hell to get it off to examine the scar. The image with which she opens the book is a drawing and explanation of a Hansaplast, the German bandage with which her mother patched her scraped knees. Nostalgia for home is common in expatriates, and Krug is no different. It is just this impossibility that Nora Krug takes on in Belonging, her difficult, provocative, and ultimately moving graphic memoir.īorn in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1977, well after the war, Krug now lives and teaches in New York City. ![]() Moreover, when the imagination has been informed by the combination of a heinous historical event, family lore or lies, the burdens of guilt, and the limits of exoneration, the task is almost impossible. Revisiting and then capturing the past, especially a historical past, always requires an exercise in imagination. ![]()
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