The Kniznick Gallery at Brandeis University has opened "Who Will Draw Our History? Women’s Graphic Narratives of the Holocaust, 1944-1949," an exhibition curated by Rachel E. Perry. The show features the work of ten female survivors who utilized visual storytelling—including handmade albums, pictorial diaries, and wordless novels—to document their experiences in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbrück. These "graphic narratives" serve as early visual testimonies, often created as a "call to duty" immediately following the liberation.
This exhibition is significant for its focus on the specific gendered experiences of the Holocaust, highlighting themes of motherhood, bereavement, and sexual violence that are frequently absent from male-centric historical accounts. By framing these artists as "first-responders" who used art as a tool for both survival and documentation, the show challenges the misconception that survivors remained silent in the immediate post-war years. It also identifies a distinct genre of sequential visual storytelling that predates the modern graphic novel, positioning these works as vital primary sources in both art history and Holocaust studies.