Belonging, with Nora Krug

Aug 17

“How do you know who you are if you don’t understand where you come from?”

— Nora Krug

About the Guest

NORA KRUG is a German–American author and illustrator. She is an Associate professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. Her graphic memoir Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home won more awards than I have space to list here. And it is incredible.

Best Books

Nora recommended the German edition of Victor Klemperer’s diaries. The English translation is divided into two books:

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 [link]
Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years [link]

Transcript

NORA KRUG: How do you know who you are if you don’t understand where you come from?

BLAIR HODGES: A few months ago my grandmother told me an old family legend about an ancestor who tried to assassinate the King of England. And it didn’t go well, so he fled to the American continent. Grandma could trace a connection from him all the way down the line to me. This is the kind of story that makes family history so exciting—a vicarious thrill. Attempted regicide? That’s in the blood running through my veins?

What do the roots of my family tree have to say about me sitting out here in the high branches? The stories we claim from our past can tell us a lot about how we like to envision ourselves now. But what do we do with stories that don’t flatter us? The histories we’d rather forget?

Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator who became obsessed with her family’s role in World War II.

NORA KRUG: Often people ask me, so what did your grandfather do during the war under the regime? And the truth is that it is incredibly difficult to really know.

BLAIR HODGES: But Nora had to know. How complicit was her grandfather with the Nazi regime?

Welcome to Fireside with Blair Hodges. In this episode we're talking about Nora Krug's graphic memoir, Belonging: a German Reckons with History and Home. It's a story of personal reckoning and national reckoning about the Holocaust, and it has implications for every single one of us.

NORAH KRUG: How do you define yourself when there aren't these positive, heroic stories that are passed on from generation to generation, but you know, shameful stories? What does that mean for your understanding of who you are as a family?

BLAIR HODGES: This is episode 1, Belonging. Nora Krug, welcome to Fireside. Thanks for being here.

NORA KRUG: Thanks so much for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: I read your book, Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, and I couldn't put it down. Congratulations on such an amazing book. I can't wait to share this with listeners.

NORA KRUG: Thank you so much.

Graphic novels as a medium - 02:01

BLAIR HODGES: So let’s dig into it here. This book is a memoir and a graphic novel. When people think about graphic novels—or when I thought about graphic novels, I would imagine some fantasy or superhero stuff. But you're using this medium, a comic medium, to address one of the most shocking human catastrophes in history. So I'm interested to know how you describe your book to people—a graphic novel that's about something so difficult.

NORA KRUG: Yes, I usually refer to it as a graphic memoir because it is nonfiction. But it is a book that talks about the Second World War and my own German family heritage. The images and the words really go together as one visual unity. And they basically both push the narrative forward to an equal degree.

BLAIR HODGES: And these images include old photographs that you found and historical objects. So as people go through the book, they're introduced to the story through material objects, as well as through illustrations. It's not just a book of like cartoons. Have you had to face any misunderstanding about what it means to draw and to illustrate as you've done such a serious work using that medium?

NORA KRUG: I haven't had any challenges from readers about this. I think ever since Maus came out there has been an acceptance of the fact that serious topics—and also topics around the Holocaust—are allowed to be told with images and not just words. And what was important to me for this project was that I was going to move away from the more traditional graphic novel format of panels and speech bubbles. Because I wanted the book to feel more like a visual diary, because it describes my process of trying to find out what happened in my family under the Nazi regime. And I wanted the reader to basically come on this journey with me and to experience some of these very visceral moments and materials I found along the way that have an archival quality. So I wanted to include them, in addition to my own drawings, I wanted to include those archival and found materials in the book.

BLAIR HODGES: And for people who are wondering, you mentioned Maus, it's a graphic novel about the Holocaust and the characters are all mice. I forget the name of the author?

NORA KRUG: Art Spiegelman.

The power of material objects - 04:13

BLAIR HODGES: Art Spiegelman. That's right.

So as we mentioned, your book introduces readers to series of German objects, physical objects that help tell the story. And you sketch them into a “notebook of a homesick émigré,” is what you call these pages. And you actually open the book this way. The first one is on the first page. It's called a Hansaplast, which is kind of a bandage brand. Why begin here with this bandage?

NORA KRUG: The idea of integrating these kind of encyclopedic pages throughout the narrative was that I wanted to give the reader an impression of the kinds of objects or memories that, to me, became more and more important as I was working on the book. I've been living abroad for almost 20 years now. And I've been realizing that there are certain objects or places or experiences that I miss, and that I would also define as German in, you know, in a particular way, or you know, experiences or objects that I think a lot of Germans living abroad would be drawn to or would feel like they're missing.

So I decided to create a series of encyclopedic pages, where I drew these objects or experiences, and then juxtapose the images with the text explaining what they are in a kind of encyclopedic fashion. I wanted to break up the family narrative throughout the book by inserting these encyclopedic pages in between, but always at moments where they made sense for the narrative. Because I thought these pages could help the reader get out of the personal narrative and away from the personal subjective and think about the subject on a more collective level and then re-enter the family narrative that's specific to me.

And so the first object that I portray at the beginning of the book, as you mentioned, is hansaplast, which is one of the most traditional band aid plasters in Germany. And, you know, I've noticed over the years that it's just very reliable because it doesn't come off easily. And so I write about this band aid and what it means to me, but I also use it as a symbol for something that covers up the wound, something that needs to eventually be torn off, so that we can inspect the scar. And that is, you know exactly what my book is about.

BLAIR HODGES: And taking off that bandage, you write—In fact, I'll just quote it, it says, "It is the most tenacious bandage on the planet, and it hurts when you tear it off to look at your scar." So, yeah, I felt like you're warning readers a little bit at the outset that there might be some pain involved in this book here.

NORA KRUG: Yes, and some introspection and reflection.

BLAIR HODGES: Everybody can think of objects like this from their past that if you encounter it, it takes you right back to being a child. Objects can be like little time machines.

NORA KRUG: Yes, I think objects are really carriers of history, and of histories. Carriers of the stories that we grow up learning or being told, and then go on telling our children or the next generation. They have a deep emotional meaning for us, independently of any culture you come from.

I also think they associate a sense of safety and security, that I personally also associate with a term of “belonging,” which is the central theme, obviously, of the book, which is why it's called Belonging. But I think these objects, to me, also communicate an idea of safety. I think we often associate the sense of belonging with a sense of safety or being understood.

Germany’s national identity crisis - 07:33

BLAIR HODGES: Early in the book you're describing your childhood a bit, and you talk about your childhood throughout the book as being haunted by something from the past that you couldn't quite grasp. How big of a part did the war play in your concept of what it means to be German?

NORA KRUG: I think it played a huge role. Even though my parents didn't talk to me specifically about it when I was a child—I mean, before I learned about it in school. I always picked up, as children do, I picked up the fact that there had once been a war. I mean, there had been many on German soil. But this one was always the one that was referred to as “the war” because it was the most present, I think, in people's minds.

And I also picked up early on the fact that this was a war in which we played a bad part, you know, something that we're still ashamed of, something that can't ever happen again.

And at the beginning of the book, I feature a photograph of myself as a one- or two-year-old child sitting in my parent’s backyard. And you can see hovering right above my head is a US military airplane, because our backyard faced the American air base that was located in my hometown in southern Germany at the time. And it was basically the—quotation marks—“occupying forces,” the people who I understood as a child were here to make sure that we don't do again whatever the terrible thing was that we had done once before.

So this is something I understood early on before even learning about the war in detail.

BLAIR HODGES: And you talk about how there's a word you knew before you even knew about the Holocaust. You knew the word konzentrationslager, pardon my German pronunciation, but talk a little bit about that kind of awareness.

NORA KRUG: There were certain words that were—I don't know if they were pronounced in whispers, or if that's just my recollection in retrospect, but words that I felt early on were uncomfortable words. And konzentrationslager was one of them. In my childish mind, I didn't know what those places were. But I understood that they were sinister places. And I had concluded they were so bad because people were forced to concentrate really hard, you know, people who live there. I mean, it was all I could come up with as a young child when hearing this word.

There are many words that I talk about in the book that are part of German culture that reflect on the war and our attempt of making amends that are so specifically German and that I thought about a lot and tried to pick apart in the book.

BLAIR HODGES: And you say when you were younger and you would travel outside of Germany, your guilt would travel with you in some sense. You have a German accent for example, so you could be identified as German.

NORA KRUG: Yes, I had many experiences traveling as a German. And when people found out I was German I was often greeted with “Heil Hitler!” I mean, this happened in England and in Japan. And of course, I was often confronted with negative stereotypes—understandably, by people abroad, about my country and my culture. And it's a difficult thing to grow up with as a teenager, because as a teenager, you're already insecure about your identity and who you should become or want to become. And there's also a generational aspect, you know, do you want to become like your parents, or do you want to become the opposite?

And in tandem with that, Germans of my generation grew up with a national identity crisis that went along with that personal one throughout those vulnerable teenage years.

So we didn't know—and I think still don't know—who we should be as Germans. There was no sense of national pride. We didn't grow up learning traditional folk songs. We never sang the national anthem. We never displayed the German flag. And I think a critical mindset towards one's country and one’s sense of patriotism is very, very important.

But I think in Germany it happened to such a degree that we were left without any sense of cultural pride. And I think that can be really disorienting for a young person growing up in that country. It can lead to all kinds of—It can have long term effects, such as right-wing sentiments later on, where people then say, “Oh, I'm tired of us always having to be the bad guys and having to feel guilty.” I think that is a problematic side-effect of not being allowed any sense of cultural pride.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm picking up on that tension as you're talking about it here, like when you say, “understandably, people would have these stereotypes.” But at the same time, you’re noticing there can be negative side effects. And you mentioned today, we're still dealing with this.

In the United States, we see this especially with racism and the after-effects of slavery and reconstruction and things like that. “The South will rise again,” and Confederate flags, and “Southern pride,” and these kind of things. And we see reemergence of that kind of sentiment here. It seems like in Germany that possibility obviously exists as well, as we've seen in recent years.

NORA KRUG: Yeah, I think it exists in any country in the world. I mean, there is racism everywhere in the world, there is anti-Semitism everywhere in the world, minorities are attacked everywhere in the world. And we need to be really, really careful, and not assume that once we've reached a level of so-called democracy that we can take it for granted. We can't. It's something we have to recognize as a process we have to continuously defend.

And I agree with you that in America, not enough work has been done—even institutionally, I mean, not even talking about a personal level, but institutionally—in facing slavery and contemporary racism, and also the mistreatment of Native Americans. And I think much more work needs to be done on both sides of the ocean.

The woman from the camp - 13:19

BLAIR HODGES: There's a story early on here where you talk about one of your very first encounters in New York City where you're on the rooftop of a friend's apartment building. And you had just moved there from Berlin to study, you didn't know anybody. And there was an elderly woman sitting in a lounge chair out there who asked you where you were from. And you said, “I'm from Germany,” and she said, “That's what I thought…”

NORA KRUG: Yes. And of course, I was at that point already familiar with that kind of response. I mean, I was in my early twenties. So immediately, I felt my heart, you know, sink. And I knew that there was an issue with the fact that I was German.

And then she went on to tell me about herself, and about the fact that she had survived the Concentration Camp and in fact, had been more or less saved out of the gas chamber sixteen times at the last moment by a very violent and brutal German prison guard, a female prison guard, who was cruel to everybody else in the camp, but who somehow had taken a liking to this young girl, and managed to convince—I found out later because I met this woman again, sixteen years later actually—managed to convince Josef Mengele, the terrible doctor who worked at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and she was able to convince him each time that she should be not one of the ones to go into the gas chambers.

So this woman told me that and of course, I didn't know how to respond as a German. Because, you know, I mean, apologizing would have seemed so—

I mean, of course, I felt terribly sorry, but that's not an appropriate word to say to somebody like that. So, you know, we just stood there for a little bit longer. And then she finally said, “You seem like you grew up in a household with loving parents, and I'm sure Germany has changed.”

And then, you know, I didn't see her again for sixteen years, and finally tracked her down again and met with her again in the same house and had a very, very warm lunch with her and found out more about her personal experience of the Holocaust.

BLAIR HODGES: And as I'm reading your words about these stories and looking at your images, I'm pulled in multiple directions, because obviously my heart goes out to the woman who experienced the Holocaust in that way. But I'm also drawn to you and your anxiety or your guilt, or some of the difficult things that you'd go through just because you were German.

And I'm pulled in multiple directions here, which is tricky, because I wonder, does it feel self-indulgent at all to explore the sorrow and the difficulty of being on the wrong end of German stereotypes? Germans were the aggressors in the war, we need to really attend to the most vulnerable, to the victims and survivors and things. But it's also been hard on Germans too. That's probably not the most popular slogan, right? “It's been hard on Germans too!” You're not gonna see that on t-shirts, I don't think.

NORA KRUG: Well, I think that was my biggest challenge when writing and illustrating the book. What I really, really wanted to avoid was for the book to come across as a way of victimizing Germans, of making it seem as if I was downplaying the German involvement in the war. This book is not about the suffering of Germans. I think the trauma that Germans experienced during the war, and under the Nazi regime was a self-imposed trauma. That's very clear to me. Germans voted for Hitler. And they supported him until the end. That is just a fact.

I mean of course there was also a German resistance movement, and everything is much, much more complex than it's often portrayed. There were Germans who were against Hitler and resisted in various ways. They were German Christians married to Jewish Germans—you never think about that kind of setup when talking about “the Germans”—often there's this distinction made of “the Germans” versus “the Jews,” and that is just too simple.

But that said, the majority of Germans supported Hitler and voted for him in a legal manner, basically. I'm not debating that. And the book is not about the Germans’ suffering. It's just about what it means to live with the legacy of the Nazis’ atrocities as a German of my generation, and also trying to find out what happened in my family, because I realized how important it is to face these questions not only on an institutional level, but also on a personal one.

A documentary record - 17:47

BLAIR HODGES: Here in the book, there's a page from your ninth grade exercise book. And this is where you can see this yellow Star of David, which you drew, to illustrate the story on the Holocaust. And your mother would talk to you about how people were forced to look at bodies of the murdered. And you had school field trips to Concentration Camp museums, and it seems like you were kind of chronicling things, even as a child. I mean, here's an example of your art—you're using art as a ninth grader to process these things.

NORA KRUG: Yes. So when I worked on the book, I became curious in retrospect about how we learned about the Holocaust. So I looked at my old history books, and I also went into my old school exercise books that my parents kept, for some reason, in their basement! [laughs]

BLAIR HODGES: I'm glad they did! [laughs]

NORA KRUG: And so I suddenly saw all these illustrated pages. I don't know if that was part of the assignment at the time, to create an illustration for an essay we had to write. I mean, there is this tradition of illustrating essays in schoolbooks that I also highlight in Belonging by including excerpts from my uncle's schoolbooks, who became a member of the SS later on and died in Italy as a soldier. So I wanted to also reflect the parallels between my illustrated schoolbooks and his.

But yes, so this page shows the yellow star that I drew on that day, and it also features a speech by Adolf Hitler, the actual worksheet that I had in school, where I analyzed his speech, almost word by word. And I was struck by how almost obsessive this analysis was. I mean, the entire sheet is marked with different colors and different—and this, to me, showed so greatly how, I mean, it was a different way of indoctrination. But that was definitely necessary, how deeply we were asked to reflect on our country's sins, basically, as children learning about it in school.

BLAIR HODGES: That page is really unbelievable. When I saw that—you're right. I mean, it seems like every single word receives analysis. It's this printout of a Hitler speech. And you've highlighted it with all these different colors. Your assignment is to lay out his mode of reasoning and intention and explain how he's using language. Not as though he's a hero, but almost as a warning about the power of words.

NORA KRUG: Exactly. And that's why I think it would be so great if we did that at American schools too, you know, if we took a president's speech—there are some interesting recent examples, [laughter] but you know, and analyzed the words that are used and the power of those words. Language is always the beginning of violence. And I think that's why we were asked to pay such attention to it in school.

BLAIR HODGES: It's beautiful here, for example you say “Being fault free was our universal goal. Our teacher’s red pen marks divided our exercise books into right and wrong, and the red marks felt as reassuring in their clarity as they were unforgiving.”

NORA KRUG: Yes, that's how it felt.

“Heimat” - 20:47

BLAIR HODGES: Following that part of the book, you introduce us to the German word heimat. And I'll have you grab a copy of your book because I'd like you to read the definition of that. And this spread is absolutely beautiful. So if you could read that definition and describe the art you've included here and what you've done, I just want to give people a sense of what's happening here. And obviously heimat is also where the title Belonging comes from.

NORA KRUG: So this is a spread that shows on the left page an old photograph of a mountain range, a snowy mountain range with a deep and dense forest underneath. And on the right page, I feature Caspar David Friedrich, the German romantic painter's painting called Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog. And it shows a man standing on a mountain looking into a valley from behind, you only seen from behind. And the valley is basically filled with fog. So you can't actually see what he's looking at exactly. But you as the viewer, or as the reader, look with him into this abyss or into the past or, you know, that's up to the to the reader to decide.

And on the left page, I feature this definition of the word heimat, which I'm going to read. It says that it's taken from the comprehensive German Brockhaus Encyclopedia. And it says "that term which defines the concept of an imaginarily developed, or actual landscape or location, with which a person associates an immediate sense of familiarity. This experience is imparted across generations, through family and other institutions, or through political ideologies. In common usage, heimat also refers to the place—also understood as a landscape—that a person is born into, where they experience early socialization that largely shapes identity, character, mentality, and worldviews. The National Socialists used the term to associate a space of withdrawal—in particular, for those groups that were looking to identify with a simplistic template for psychological orientation."

BLAIR HODGES: And then after such a technical in-depth description, on the next on the page right next to it—

NORA KRUG: So on the opposite page, it says, “How do you know who you are, if you don't understand where you come from?”

BLAIR HODGES: And these questions seem to be exactly what's driving the entire book.

NORA KRUG: Exactly. Because I've felt and continue to feel so culturally disoriented as a German, it makes it hard to define who you are, in a way, who you can be. You don't have that comforting cultural framework, that emotional framework to latch on to that makes you feel safe and secure. Because you grew up questioning your origins to a certain degree as a people, or your past.

I think what's important to recognize is that what we are made of is the past. That the past is not actually a thing of the past. The past continues to live with us and we have to confront it. And that will also obviously have an effect on who we think we are as human beings.

BLAIR HODGES: And that painting, do you think a lot of Germans would recognize that painting?

NORA KRUG: Yes, it's kind of a classic painting in Germany. But it's also actually a motif that I kept on finding while I was going to flea markets, looking for old photographs that I thought could tell me something about German cultural identity.

I went to German flea markets over the course of, I don't know, ten years, and I collected photographs that I thought featured recurring motifs. And one of these recurring motifs were people in landscapes from behind, looking out into the open—you know, it could be mountains, it could be fields, it could be rivers, it could be forests. But I kept on finding this particular, almost an archetype, portraying a solitary figure from behind looking at the landscape. And to me, it's a very powerful thing. And it also had a very symbolic character in my book, because to me, it means looking back from a distance at your past and trying to make sense of it.

BLAIR HODGES: And of course, people that look at the book will see you've repurposed the painting to depict yourself and put it on the cover. When did you know that was going to happen?

NORA KRUG: I think probably during my conversations with the American publisher about what the cover should be. And again, I felt like it was probably one of the images that most symbolically represented my act of looking back and facing the past, to show myself from behind looking at the landscape. In the American edition, I feature a drawn image of myself from behind looking at what is actually a photograph that was taken in 1900 that shows the Black Forest. And for some of the foreign editions, I used a drawn landscape that has a sketch-like character and that I tried to indicate that the idea of belonging will always just remain a sketch or, you know, a vague thing that we have to continuously redefine over time.

BLAIR HODGES: It reminded me of the last line of that definition of heimat, people looking to identify with a simplistic template for psychological orientation. In other words, they're looking for some kind of story about who they are and where they came from. Something that's simple and graspable, and hopefully positive.

NORA KRUG: Yeah, I mean, I think in this instance, it was referred to more as a negative thing, that, you know, that's what the Nazis did. They tried to provide that template. And of course, that template was exclusive to a certain kind of person and not accessible to a different kind of person. And again, this is something we see all over the world.

Such as how in America there is this idea that you are un-American if you don't believe in a certain worldview, or if you contradict a certain political movement you are labeled as un-American. And in fact, cultural identity should not be something defined by one particular person or party. It should be able to be defined by everybody individually. And it should also be something that is not static, or exclusive. And I think images also play a very, very big role in shaping those notions of cultural identity.

BLAIR HODGES: As I read the book, I saw that impulse in you, that longing for home, that longing to belong, that desire for hiemat. And also a recognition that that's a dangerous proposition, too. So this is what stands out to me about the book, is how it explores how this longing and this need can be turned to such unbelievably horrible purposes. But here you are—you still have that longing, you still have that need, you're still kind of pursuing something like that, hopefully to a better end.

NORA KRUG: I think what's important to recognize is that longing to belong is a natural impulse, probably even a biological impulse, I think everybody wants to belong to some group that they feel understands them, and then that you yourself, understand. Because it gives you this sense of security.

And so there are people that claim these days that you can—I mean, even the Airbnb website says you can make your home anywhere in the world. And I think it's just not as simple as that. I think cultural belonging is formed—I mean, at least in my experience—a lot in your early years, I think. Where you grew up, and how you experienced that environment, the way the landscape looks, the food you eat, the way that your language sounds, or the music, shapes your worldview really, really deeply. And you can't always escape from it.

And I think at the same time, you want to have that sense of belonging. So again, one of my fears was that the book could be read as me trying to basically say, “Well, I deserve to have a home too. And,” you know, “Let's move on.”

But that's not the point. In fact, the point of the book was never to overcome the feelings of guilt, or to stop investigating what happened in our country. But to try to make it possible for both to exist at the same time. I think we should—in any country, we should be able to look at the past, to face the atrocities any country has committed, to face the atrocities our country has committed, while at the same time feeling like we can express sincere love and affection for that country and celebrate its culture.

And I think this is something that most countries struggle with. In the case of Germany, it was, you know, we didn't celebrate our culture, but we did face the atrocities committed by our country in the past. And I feel like in America, the opposite is true, that there's a lot of celebrating going on—which is also important, because people come from all over the world, and you need to have a common denominator somehow. But at the same time, there is a sense that if you reflect more critically about slavery and racism and so forth, you can't, you won't be able to love your country as much. And why shouldn't you? I mean, I think both should be possible at the same time. And I think the book is trying to at least raise these questions. But it's not trying to raise beyond the guilt.

Disturbing nostalgia - 30:21

BLAIR HODGES: And it also shows the danger of nostalgia, which can become a toxic impulse as well. In the process of researching for the book and preparing things you joined an online forum that was discussing the Axis nations and you found some disturbing, really disturbing, nostalgia there.

NORA KRUG: Yes. I researched certain platforms that were quite creepy for me, but I felt like it was important for me to actually also know what's going on. You know, what kind of people are out there having all kinds of conversations.

Another thing that I was really facing was with the choice of images. I really needed to be very careful when I chose, for instance, old photographs of landscapes, and when I paired such photographs with texts that spoke about German loss, for instance, that it wouldn't come across as sentimental. I think that would have really been the worst thing that could have happened, is for a German to talk about the war from, you know, with a sense of sentimentality.

So in choosing those images, I had to make sure that the text and the images worked well together and did not convey this sense of nostalgia, because that is a term that I as a German have a problem with.

BLAIR HODGES: And you've seen people on these forums talking about hairstyles, and boots, and these specific artifacts in a way that isn't just being curious about history. It seems very overly interested in Nazi artifacts, for example.

NORA KRUG: Yes. Whenever I have to do work illustrating the Nazi period and I google “Nazi uniforms,” I would say that fifty percent of the images that come up are of contemporary people from all over the world wearing Nazi uniforms in some sort of reenactment situation or worse. Some secret celebration of that time and that group of people. And it's very disturbing to see. That's why it's so important that we learn about history in depth, because, you know, we have to avoid this kind of fetishization of Nazism.

A poisonous mushroom - 32:26

BLAIR HODGES: That's Nora Krug. She's a German-American author and illustrator. Her visual memoir, Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home was chosen as Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and others. It's very excellent. She's also an associate professor of illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Nora, I was speechless when I came to the page where you include writings from your uncle when he was a little boy. And you mentioned this before, but now I'd like you to really describe these exercise books. When I saw these, it was chilling, because I recognized the handwriting and artistic skill level of a child. And what this child had written was just astonishing.

NORA KRUG: When I was a teenager, I came upon a number of exercise books in the old cabinet that my parents have in their living room. And they are the exercise books of my paternal uncle, who was a child when the Nazis came to power. And so, he learned a lot of propaganda in school. And as it was customary at the time, he illustrated a lot of those essays that he wrote in his book. And when you leaf through these exercise books it's really a chilling experience, because you see these beautifully hand-lettered essays together with illustrations of swastikas. And there's one little drawing of a book that says Mein Kampf on it. But also caricatures of Jewish men.

And what was so strange and difficult for me as a child was that I didn't know this uncle, because he was finally drafted into the SS and died at the age of nineteen in Italy as a soldier. And these exercise books were the only thing that I had, that reminded me of him, you know, that spoke to him and his existence. I mean, they were the only proof of existence, alongside a handful of photographs of him.

And again, this is the conflict you experience growing up in Germany, is that you want to know something about your family members, you are a family. But then this is the only thing you can go on! And what do you do in a situation like that? How do you define yourself as a family unit when there aren't these positive and heroic stories that are passed on from generation to generation, but you know, shameful stories? What does that mean for your understanding of who you are as a family?

BLAIR HODGES: And you lock in on this story in his notebook called “The Jew: A Poisonous Mushroom,” and this becomes a motif in the book as well. Maybe just take a quick second to explain what that story is in this child's book.

NORA KRUG: This is an essay that he wrote that compares Jews to poisonous mushrooms. And I believe it's a story that's based on a book that was actually published by the Nazis at the time that maybe the teacher asked them to retell. I had no idea what the assignment was for this particular essay. And alongside this essay, he drew pine trees and poisonous mushrooms with faces and also a caricature of a Jewish man.

Another thing that I found really striking was that you can actually see that the teacher marks the story, he marks the grammatical mistakes, and he gives a B for the content. It was just, you know, what he grew into as a child.

At the same time, it was important for me to clarify that even though he was too young to really understand Nazi propaganda, I really deeply believe that he was old enough—I believe he was twelve at the time—to understand that Jews are not like poisonous mushrooms. You know, he had probably— there were Jewish children in the village where he lived that he played with. And so again, yes he was indoctrinated, but he was also a human being who should have known at that age that writing a story like that is a harmful thing to do.

BLAIR HODGES: And you show how that recurs. You have a picture of your mother as a child wearing a costume, dressed up as a poisonous mushroom. And this was a thing, this poisonous mushroom was a thing. And also on the cover, I wondered if it was related to the jacket you depict yourself wearing on the front. I noticed you have a red jacket with white spots which matches these poisonous mushrooms. I wondered if that was deliberate.

NORA KRUG: I use the poisonous mushroom as a recurring motif because it has a deep cultural symbolic meaning. It’s a symbol of good luck in Germany. But then again, it had this terrible other meaning that came across in my uncle's essay. And so again, it has this this this contradictory nature. And how do you live with this contradiction?

And it’s funny because a lot of people ask me about the design of the jacket I'm wearing on the book cover. But I actually was not conscious when I created the image that I was replicating the pattern of the poisonous mushroom. In fact, I think the early draft used green with white dots as the color of the jacket. I don't know if that was a subconscious thing that I did. But I like the meaning of that.

Was grandfather a Nazi? - 37:41

BLAIR HODGES: Wow, alright. Now let's talk a little bit about your grandfather. One of the things you're doing throughout this book is searching for one of your grandfathers. You talk a lot about both sides of your family history, but the plot I felt especially drawn to was the one about Willie, your grandfather, and your memories of things your mother told you about him. There's a passage I'd like you to read here. It's the one that's next to the pocket watch.

NORA KRUG: My mother grew up in the age of oblivion. She was born in 1946, in Karlsruhe, my hometown. All that played on German television in the 1950s were escapist romance dramas set an Alpine and black forest landscapes. When she was sixteen, she discovered a left-wing magazine about the Holocaust in a garbage can. She had already learned about Germany's atrocities at school. But the photographs in the magazine were the first ones she had ever seen of the camps. Terrified, she confronted her father. What did he say? I asked her when I was a teenager myself. “I don't think my father was a Nazi. He told me he didn't like Hitler, because of the way he screamed all the time. I remember once overhearing a conversation my parents had with friends over coffee. Nobody knew what was happening to the Jews, they said, but six million sounds a bit exaggerated…”

BLAIR HODGES: And then you have a picture there, that the story is placed over—a beautiful image that you've colored and done some wonderful things with. It's this photograph of your grandparents Willie and Ana in 1952. The line that really caught my eye here was when your mother said, “I don't think my father was a Nazi.”

NORA KRUG: Yes, I think it was a classic thing that my grandparent’s generation did not talk much to their children about their involvement under the Nazi regime. At that time, it was still really a taboo. That has changed a lot. I mean, my parents’ generation tended to talk a lot about those issues with us. But there was not much said in my parent's parent's households on the subject. So my parents had no idea what their parents’ political position or involvement with a Nazi regime might have been.

BLAIR HODGES: And you're using these images to tell this story. On the next page, you have a picture of this grandfather, and you've cut his face out and put some words there, as you're kind of signaling to the reader that who he really was has been obscured by time. You're trying to find out who this man is and so you've cut his face out.

And this becomes, it seems to become a passion for you, to find out what your mother just didn't want—apparently just couldn't bring herself to dig more into. She says, “I don't think he was.” She didn't want him to be, obviously. But you seem driven, like, “Actually, I don't want him to be either, but I want to know.”

NORA KRUG: Yes, I think there are several reasons for that. I think that it's always easier to investigate your grandparents than your parents. As a child, you're very closely connected to your parents. And I think it would have been harder for me if he had been my actual father.

The other thing, though, is that when my parents first learned about these things, there were many documents, archival documents, that were not made public yet. So some of the things that I found, my parents could have never found. And the internet didn't exist. I found out a lot of information by going online, and my parents didn't have the technological tools to do so.

But it's also true I think, that most people of my parents’ generation, pretty much ended the questioning after their parents told them that, you know, they weren't involved. That that kind of ended the conversation and there was no digging deeper. I think that's something that definitely changed in my generation.

The office and the synagogue - 41:30

BLAIR HODGES: Certainly. And you're taking on multiple roles. You're an illustrator, you're an author, you're memoirist. You've also, at this point, become sort of an investigative journalist, and you're finding these documents which you incorporate into the book. And this is really what makes the book shine, is the way that you make a sort of scrapbook quality.

And something as simple as a street address takes you down a really dark path—you find this street address and it leads into a discussion of Kristallnacht, one of the most terrifying nights of the war.

NORA KRUG: I'm a little bit of a hobby detective. I like snooping around. And especially in archives, I feel like you can find so much information. And I was almost obsessive about trying to find the tiniest scrap of paper that would say something about my family. I mean, my family was obscure, you know. There was nobody prominent in my family. So I depended on whatever I could find.

I went into my hometown's archive, and I looked through the old phone books. And just seeing these names come alive, and seeing some of the Jewish names, which then suddenly became one category in the phonebook, you know, here’s a list of the Jews living in your town. And then suddenly, the Jewish names disappear completely. I mean, the whole history is written in those phone books.

And so I looked—I unfolded an old map that was in the back of the 1938 phonebook. And I looked at where my grandfather's office was located. And what I hadn't realized before was that it was actually located right across from the synagogue of the city. And only by looking at this old map was I able to see that. And I realized that he was very close to the events, I mean physically close to the events that unfolded during the so-called Kristallnacht, you know, the term that the Nazis coined. The November pogroms is the historically correct term, you know, when the synagogues in my hometown were burned down.

And yeah, it just kept making me wonder what he was doing at that time. I mean, it was in the evening, so he was probably not at his office at that time. But he would have, I mean, involuntarily, at least, he would have seen what happened the next day. He would have seen the burned-out building. So then I researched eyewitness accounts from that time. And based on the accounts, I came to new conclusions about what he might have or might not have seen.

Mitläufer - 43:56

BLAIR HODGES: It's a powerful part, Nora, because I want to say you really let readers into the history there by using imagination. Imagination is all you can fall back on at this point. You've got these documents, you've got this information, but it can only take you so far. And then you can say, “Well, maybe he did this, or maybe he felt like this. Some Germans felt like this. Maybe that was like him. Maybe he was like this.”

And so readers are really introduced to the complexity of possibilities for Germans at the time, where it's not this simple story of bad Germans, Nazis, and Jews, victims. It's all kinds of different people and all kinds of different possibilities. And you can't really nail it down when it comes to your grandfather at this point. There are so many possibilities, you're getting so close to it. But you still can't nail it down.

NORA KRUG: Yes, often people ask me, so what did your grandfather do during the war under the regime? And the truth is that it's incredibly difficult to really know, because unless you were a high-ranking Nazi whose life has been very thoroughly documented, or a resistance fighter. You know, most Germans were so-called “followers,” they followed along. But this term could have meant all kinds of things. A follower could have committed mass crimes. A follower could have helped save lives.

BLAIR HODGES: I want to say too, when you say “follower,” you mean this as an actual category.

NORA KRUG: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: This isn't just a word you’re using. They would actually categorize people according to guilt, or according to their complicity as a legal way to address what happened in the past, and “follower” was a legal category, right?

NORA KRUG: Yes, the Western Allies issued questionnaires that every German over the age of 18 had to fill out. They had to write about what they were up to, basically, under the Nazi regime. And my grandfather had to fill out one of those, too. I found it in the archive in my hometown. And again, it was a very chilling experience to open this document because it had probably been dormant at the archive for over seventy years. Here I am looking at the original forms that my grandfather filled out with his fountain pen! It was almost as if he was talking to me. And he was finally answering these questions I've had ever since I've been a teenager about what he did during the war.

So based on what answers you gave in these questionnaires, you were ranked into five different categories that spanned from major war criminal to innocent, basically, and in the middle was this term follower, or mitläufer. And that's the category that I think most Germans fell under.

But again, it could have meant so many different things. It could have meant you committed terrible crimes, or you could have saved lives. That's why I felt it was important to investigate my grandfather's life in particular, but there's almost only so much you can go on, there's only so much information that I could gather, that I realized that the conclusion of the book was not to find out everything about my grandfather's life under the regime, but to come to terms of the fact that there are certain unknowns, and certain fictitious stories, and that I need to live with that fact.

BLAIR HODGES: I want to say, the way you crafted It was absolutely brilliant. I felt, as I'm turning these pages, the tension. I felt like you brought me to that archive, I felt like I was sitting there with you, because you've got the documents in the book. And as I'm turning—you're talking about turning the pages and looking for where he would identify his party affiliation, for example. And there's that moment and I'm not going to spoil it for listeners, I really want people to go read the book and find out what happens in that moment. I don't want them to know.

But as I'm turning the page to see this answer—I just want to say thank you for inviting me into that moment of reckoning with something from the past. Because when I think about my family history, for some reason, if I were to find out something like that—Why is that so difficult? Why does that matter to us so much? Why would it really matter to you? You're not your grandfather! So why would it matter so much?

NORA KRUG: Because I think the narratives that we tell each other and that we pass on over generations really make up our sense of who we are as people. And you know, I feel this on Veterans Day, every year when people here say, “Oh, yeah, my grandfather fought here and there, and I was so proud of it.” And yeah, my grandfather also fought in the war, [laughs] but I'm not proud of it! And I can't celebrate this day, and I shouldn't celebrate this day. And I can't draw from these stories that give me a sense of familial belonging, and pride, and connectedness, even in my small family circle. And I think, I think that's why it's hard to face these truths, because they unsettle who we think we are as families.

Publishing the personal - 48:24

BLAIR HODGES: Your book combines art with history with genealogy with confession, with imagination, but it also seems radically personal. Did you have any second thoughts as you were creating this book, it seems very personal and you're publishing it to the world.

NORA KRUG: It's funny, because I'm not usually somebody who goes through the world and tells everybody how I feel and what I think, so I'm not really exhibitionist in that way. But the drive to tell this story, and to investigate it, and to tell it to myself really, was so strong that I almost didn't think about that while I was writing the book. I just felt like I could deal with that later. And now, of course, there are sometimes awkward moments where I meet somebody who basically knows everything about me and my family. And I know nothing about them—

BLAIR HODGES: [laughter] Like right now, for example!

NORA KRUG: (Laughs) Yeah. But I don't know, I somehow don't mind it. I feel good about the fact that I faced my family's past even though it was uncomfortable. And I somehow have no—I don't know why, but I have no problem sharing it.

And also, what I came to understand by talking to audiences around the world really is that there's always a point where the book is not understood as my family history or the history of Germany, but that every country—

It has a universal message, which is that any country should face its past. And so when I do interviews in Chile, their relationship to the military governments comes up. When I talk to Canadian audiences, there are always, you know, reflections on First Nation people. And really every country has that guilt that—I mean, in Italy, the book was very popular because a lot of Italians feel like the history of colonialism and Mussolini and fascism hasn't been addressed sufficiently.

So in a way, to me, that makes it easier too. Because I know that this is not just about me airing dirty laundry about my family, but it's really about more universal questions that could apply to any family in any country.

BLAIR HODGES: I appreciated that. I think your book is a wonderful example of honestly reckoning with the past, incorporating the difficult with the good.

I also wondered, are there things you still want to know about your history? This book is pretty comprehensive when it comes to your grandparents. Did you have unanswered questions when you finished the book that you wish you could have included there?

NORA KRUG: Yes. At the very end, in the epilogue, I include a photograph that I found right as I had completed the book already—and the publication was scheduled and everything—that shows a group of Social Democrats, which was the liberal party in Germany at the time, and also the Nazis strongest political enemy. So they were taken prisoner in my hometown and brought to a concentration camp—one of the early concentration camps in 1933, not long after Adolph Hitler had come to power. And it shows their arrival at the camp, these men, a group of men surrounded by other men in uniforms with very spiteful facial expressions. And it's an original print of a photograph of that event that I found in the old shoe box in my parents’ cabinet where they store the family photographs.

And I had seen a similar photograph in the archive months before—a photograph showing the same exact thing, but taken a few seconds before. So there's a slight difference in movement, which again, makes me think that the print I found is an original, it's not something that was printed for propaganda purposes—

BLAIR HODGES: Mass produced, right.

NORA KRUG: —It's also not a “juicy,” in quotation marks, image enough to have served propaganda purposes at the time. So I don't know why my grandfather owned it. How did it end up in this shoe box? And that made me really curious. That's something I would like to continue to explore. But I have not found any answers from the archives yet. I'm thinking of trying to track down descendants of the of the photographer who maybe has taken the photograph and see if I can get more information on that.

Being changed by the project - 52:37

BLAIR HODGES: Well, it sounds like the project in some ways isn't done for you, then. How did doing this book change you as a person? I mean, this is something that you published as a professional, as an artist, as part of your career. I mean, you're an associate professor of illustration. But on a personal level, how did doing this project change you?

NORA KRUG: I mean, again, the goal of the project was not to overcome these feelings of shame. I mean, I just have them in any case. I can't just brush them off. But I think what it helped me do was, you know, by facing these feelings of guilt, and by facing my family's past, I feel in a way I can live better with it. You know, I feel like I have done the work that I needed to do. And as you said earlier, it also helps inform me, inform my decisions that I will make in the future.

As I live here—You know, in my contemporary life, I mean, we make decisions on a daily level, decisions that actually have consequences for other people in the world, somewhere in the world. You know, the clothes we buy, where they are made, the meat we eat. All these decisions we make on a daily basis have political and personal consequences for others in the world. And I'm trying to be more conscientious of those decisions. And I think the book helped me be more conscientious about those things.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Nora Krug. She's Associate professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. And today we're talking about her book Belonging: a German Reckons with History and Home. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. This is one of the best books I have ever read. And I really hope people will take the time to read it. Thank you so much for writing it.

NORA KRUG: Thank you so much. That's very kind of you.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, yes, thank you, Nora. We'll be right back.

[BREAK]

Best Books! - 55:26

BLAIR HODGES: We're back with Nora Krug. She's author, designer, illustrator, and everything else of the book Belonging: a German Reckons with History and Home.

Alright Nora, one of the reasons I invited you on the show is because I wanted to recommend your book to everybody I know. This is kind of like a recommendation show. If I bring people on it, I want people to check out these books. I love a good book recommendation. And so I let you know before we met that it would be your turn. This segment is called best books. I wanted you to tell us about a book that changed your life, or a book that influenced your work, or a book that you think would be interesting to people. So I'm going to turn the time over to you to talk about a best book, or best books.

NORA KRUG: There are so many that it was very hard for me to come up with one, but I thought I'd choose one that relates to my book directly, which is the diaries of Victor Klemperer. Victor Klemperer was a language scholar in Germany and he lived through the Nazi time as a Jewish German man married to a Christian woman. And he chronicled this experience of living under the regime as a Jewish man at the time in his diaries. And I recommend reading those diaries because they really give you a sense of what everyday life was like for someone like him.

And also a much more complex perspective on that experience than we often get, you know, in Hollywood movies or other platforms, because it's a very quiet book in a way. And it just talks about his everyday encounters with friends—or friends who turn out not to be friends anymore, or people who ended up standing by him and his family. And it also shows the progressive and very quiet but persistent change that Germany underwent. It gives you a sense of how a country can slip down the abyss basically step by step and day by day. So I really recommend his diaries.

BLAIR HODGES: That sounds like a good partner for your book. Remind us again, the name and author?

NORA KRUG: The author's name is Victor Klemperer. And the book is called The Klemperer Diaries: 1933 to 1945.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, great. And I'll have a link to that in the show notes and on our website and send it out on social media too, so people can find that. But Nora, thank you so much for joining me here at Fireside. I really, really love your book. And I really enjoyed this conversation.

NORA KRUG: Thank you so much. I did too.

Outro - 57:50

BLAIR HODGES: Fireside with Blair Hodges is sponsored by the Howard W. Hunter Foundation—supporters of the Mormon Studies program at Claremont Graduate University in California, and also by the Dialogue Foundation. It’s a proud part of the Dialogue Podcast Network.

Thanks so much for listening. Check out the show notes in your podcast app or at our website, firesidepod.org. You’ll find a complete written transcript of this episode, more good stuff about Nora Krug’s Belonging, and a link where you can purchase the book.

Fireside is going to reach as far as you help me take it. It’s as simple as leaving a review of the show in Apple Podcasts. And it would be amazing if you could post a link online saying something you liked about it. Recommend it to the kind of friends you know will really appreciate it! I’m here to chat with you online about the show, the handle is @podfireside, where you can meet me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Fireside is recorded, produced, and edited by me, Blair Hodges, right here in Salt Lake City. My production assistant Kate Davis created the transcript. Special thanks to Christine Frandsen, Matthew Bowman, Caroline Kline, and Kristen Ullrich-Hodges.

See you in two weeks on Fireside. I’ll save a seat for you.

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NOTE: Transcripts have been lightly edited for readability.

CREDITS

Music: Faded Paper Figures, “Not The End Of The World (Even As We Know It),” “Lost Stars,” courtesy of Shorthand Records.
Photo credit: Nina Subin

Blair Hodges