History,_Memory_and_Identity

The non-fiction picture book, Erika’s Story represents the power of history and collective memory to shape personal history and experience even in the absence of direct individual memory. Ruth Vander Zee provides an “Author’s Note” which explains her “chance meeting” with Erika and utilises collective memory metonymical icons to represent and foreshadow the narrative focus on the Jewish survival of the Holocaust. The date of their meeting is “the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War 11”; Erika states “with longing in her voice, that she had always wanted to visit Jerusalem but had never been able to afford the trip’; the author “noticed she was wearing a Star of David around her neck”; and Erika further states “that she had one time gotten as far as the entrance to Dachau but could not bear to enter.” Zee then adopts Erika’s first person narrative point of view to represent her true autobiographical recount of surviving the Holocaust. The opening statements cites widely accepted historical ‘facts”: “From 1933 to 1945, six million of my people were killed. Many were shot. Many were starved. Many were burned in ovens and gas chambers. I was not.” This use of anaphora emphasises Erika’s deep awareness of the number of Jews killed and the number of methods utilised to obliterate her race. Using spare, eloquent, straightforward narrative widely spaced on cream pages to represent the gaps in Erika’s history, Zee again uses anaphora to emphasise the fact that Erika has no direct individual memory of the Holocaust. “I was born sometime in 1944. I do not know my birthdate. I do not know my birth name. I do not know in what city or country I as born. I do not know if I have brothers or sisters. What I do know, is that when I was just a few months old I was saved from the Holocaust.” Erika was thrown from a train onto grass and rescued by “witnesses” who took her to a woman who risked her life to care for her. She gave her the name Erika. This woman and all other characters in the text, including Erika’s husband, children and grandchildren remain nameless as this story is about “Erika”. Erika believes that, “on her way to death, my mother threw me to life, ” and this belief shapes her personal history and experience. Despite being raised by a non-Jewish foster mother, she maintains the faith of her birthright represented by the symbolic Star of David worn around her neck, her allusion to God’s biblical promise to Abraham that his people “would be as many as the stars in the heavens’ and her concluding affirmation: “My star still shines. ” The symbolic image of a golden star opens the text as a striking five-pointed die-cut star on the front cover shining through monochromatic representation of Nazi war activity, and closes the text following her affirmation that firmly links her to “her people”. Erika’s belief leads her to imaginatively recreate her personal history using the power of history and collective memories: “I imagine my mother and father robbed of everything they owned, forced from their home, and relocated into a ghetto.” Erika assumes her parents were eager to leave the ghetto and escape the “typhus, overcrowding, filth and starvation” to resettle in “a better place” and wonders what they were told and whether they had ever heard the rumours of the death camps. Roberto Innocenti multiplies the emotional impact of Erika’s spoken words with haunting, full-page, finely detailed, sepia, photo-realistic images that represent the iconic train cars, train tracks, cold brick and stone buildings surrounded by vicious-looking barbed wire, Nazi soldiers who present only their backs to the responder and foregrounded barriers signposted as ‘Verboten” segregating the Jews from the rest of the public and visually from the responder. The Jews are represented as boarding the trains in an orderly fashion, well-dressed with high-heeled shoes, but with their faces covered by scarves or the barriers. The golden colour of the Star Of David symbols sewn onto their clothes is prominent amongst the sepia tones, iconically reinforcing the history of Jewish denotation and segregation. This is further reinforced by small Stars of David being used to separate Erika’s thoughts throughout the text, representing the defining impact that her religion has on her identity. The white baby buggy that is left on the train platform represents the innocence of babies being taken to slaughter, and the callousness of the Nazi soldiers who deprived a baby of any comfort as she was transported to her death. Erika’s attempt to recreate this event is emotive. Using rhetorical questions such as “Did they panic when they heard the doors barred shut'”, “When did they make their decision'” “Did she whisper my name'” “Did she cover my face with kisses and tell me that she loved me' Did she cry' Did she pray'” Erika represents the emotional turmoil she has experienced in her personal experience. In imagining how her father must have helped her mother by spreading the barbed wire across the hole, Erika leads the responder to realise why she is so sure: “My mother threw me from the train.” The corresponding illustration shows hands throwing a baby swaddled in bright pink through the air from a train as it hurtled through pastoral landscapes. Erika is represented in colour whilst the background of monochromatic sepia tones are used to date the scene and represent the iconic trains and bizarre calm and normality of the non-Jewish world. This image lingers long in the memory of responders as an emotive representation of her innocence and her mother’s unusual act of love and sacrifice. The impact of this “non-remembered” personal history is Erika’s experience of frequent sadness and strong desire to belong to a family. After marrying and having three children and grandchildren, Erika declares, “My tree once again has roots. My star still shines,” which symbolically represents her connection to her Jewish family and faith. Innocenti uses colour in all illustrations that represent Erika. It is her story. The first coloured illustration shows her talking with the author of the book. She is swaddled in a pink blanket when she is thrown from the train. The final double-page shows her as a child in a peaceful scene with the woman who cared for her. Faces are normally used to identify people. Erika’s face is never shown to represent her difficulties in determining her identity. She is wearing a pink skirt that links to her pink swaddling and watching a passing train leaving the responder with an image of Erika using history and icons of collective memory to inform and shape her personal history and identity. Ruth Vander Zee and Roberto Innocenti: (2003) Erika's Story Mankato, MN 56002, USA; Creative Editions.