Belonging by Nora Krug is a story that tugged on my heart. I felt a lot while reading it and was able to connect to it in various aspects of my life, it is one that will go on my shelves and that I will lend out to other's that I think it will impact as well.

This book reads more like a mixed media journal than a traditional graphic memoir. The artwork, sublime and stunning, draws you in to this story of the collective shame felt during the aftermath of the Holocaust.

I received an ARC copy from netgalley for my honest review, so thank you netgalley and publishers for sending me a copy =]
Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow throughout her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. For Nora, the simple fact of her German citizenship bound her to the Holocaust and its unspeakable atrocities and left her without a sense of cultural belonging. Yet Nora knew little about her own family’s involvement in the war: though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it.

In her late thirties, after twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child and young adult. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier in Italy. Her extraordinary quest, spanning continents and generations, pieces together her family’s troubling story and reflects on what it means to be a German of her generation.

Belonging wrestles with the idea of Heimat, the German word for the place that first forms us, where the sensibilities and identity of one generation pass on to the next. In this highly inventive visual memoir—equal parts graphic novel, family scrapbook, and investigative narrative—Nora Krug draws on letters, archival material, flea market finds, and photographs to attempt to understand what it means to belong to one’s country and one’s family. A wholly original record of a German woman’s struggle with the weight of catastrophic history, Belonging is also a reflection on the responsibility that we all have as inheritors of our countries’ pasts.
The cover and title is what originally drew me to this book.
This is my first book by this author. It was alltogether an easy read. ♡ I give this book a
3.5 star rating!

This was such an engrossing story told in such a beautiful manner. It's a timely topic with conversations about the temperature of German society before and during world war II and how ordinary people can be involved in horrifying situations. The pathos and bold honesty Krug infuses this memoir with are touching and devastating. The scrapbook/journal format seamlessly blend historic artifacts and her own impressions. This is an important book that everyone should read.

I don't think there are enough words to accurately describe how beautiful this graphic novel is. The mix of various diary entries, photographs, various illustrations, and excerpts from propaganda combine to pack an emotional punch. I can't recommend this memoir about growing up German after the horrors of the Nazis enough.

There are books I love to read, subjects I love to read about, and books I love to recommend. This one checks 2/3. Nora Krug’s search for identity and place is a fascinating one and is told skillfully here with photos and documents and illustration and mixed media. It’s just understandable heavy. So heavy that I had to take multiple week-long breaks which is wholly uncharacteristic for me.

Nora’s father was born to be a replacement for a child that was lost to war, so much that he was given the same name. A family trip from Germany to Italy ends up bringing the two together for the first time; one standing on a new land on vacation and the other six feet under. Family lore is woven with factual history to explain the deeply personal confusion of wanting to understand the past and not knowing what that search will uncover.

The art style is variable in way that enhanced the story and reminds me of work by Lauren Redniss. This is a story worth telling and a graphic novel worth reading.

'Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home' by Nora Krug is a non-fiction graphic novel about the difficulty of finding one's place in the world with a troubled national history.

Nora was born long after the fall of the Nazi party in Germany, but the guilt of her nation still hangs over her. She has an uncle that died in the war, and a grandfather that may or may not have been involved. Family accounts say he wasn't, but what is the truth?

Nora travels back to a town in Germany to find out about an uncle she never knew, an aunt she has never met, and a grandfather whose past raises more questions than answers at times. Along the way she discovers her own place in the world and where she belongs.

I used the word graphic novel, but that may imply that the book is drawn, but it includes family pictures, letters, documents, and more. There are elements of collage also. What shines though is the narrative, which is told with the kind of frankness and openness that I found greatly appealing. I'm so glad I got to read this book.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Scribner and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

What is it like to be of the most despised nationality in modern history? I’m not talking about being an American, though it’s not outrageous to think our history of slavery and treatment of Native Americans would qualify us for that dubious honor. It’s Germany that is so reviled in history, maybe deservedly, maybe not, but almost certainly because if they didn’t perfect evil, at the very least they certainly perfected the popular visualization of what it looks like and those images stay in the minds of generations of people all around the world, equating the German Nazi with the ultimate manifestation of organized evil on the earth. It’s not an unreasonable worldview to have.

But when you get past the wide swathes of history and focus on the personal, you find the horrible truth — Nazis were human, living lives that involved other humans, most notably family and most significantly children, grandchildren, and further on, who live their lives long after the horrific reality of Nazi Germany has ceased to be the eternal present.

In her profound and dense illustrated memoir Belonging: A German Reckons With History And Home, illustrator Nora Krug examines her national identity and her family’s history to try to explain why Germans are the way they are by delving into the Hitler-era questions she has about her own family. What she finds is the story of the decisions everyday people make in the face of dark historical moments, of the fraught and painful revelations that lead us to judge the actions of our ancestors even as we move ahead in life, unaware whether our own actions will be judged in a similar way one day. In the face of horrible times, will we know what we should have done at the moment we should have done it? Or will we become lost in the confusing swirl of the present like so many before us?

Look at your life so far in regard to the wider political situation. Are you confident that your grandchild will find nothing to question your decisions?

Krug’s look into her own life begins with an examination of German-ness in general, winding through cultural touchstones that are important to Germans, but also taking time to look at how her generation has been raised to comprehend World War II and the Holocaust, and how that generation’s philosophy of life is affected by that comprehension, as well as the reaction of non-Germans to German history. Part of this journey is spurred on by Krug living in America, partly removed from her German home, while another is a reaction against the broken quality of her extended family and the blackouts of family lore that have resulted.

Krug’s curiosity begins to demand the answer to what many Germans of her generation must wonder — what did her grandparents do in the war? The families have their own beliefs about the grandparents, but Krug is fixated on getting to the truth, regardless of what relatives think is the truth. A good portion of this means researching the life of her mother’s father, Willi, and weighing the proof she finds of his concrete involvement with the Nazi Party against the more speculative personal story of why he was involved and what personal associations he had that might mitigate this circumstance.

For her father’s side of the family, it becomes a more complicated story in terms of family ties, with Krug’s father estranged from his own sister and the rest of the family, and the mysteries of a deceased older brother looming in the lore. Krug’s quest becomes much larger here, not only about reconciling her to her heritage but repairing rifts in her family that have obstructed the natural flow of biography.

It’s to our benefit that Krug gives herself so fully to her research, and her ability to spin the facts around real emotion and insight concocts a history both personal and sweeping and thorough from each vantage point. The narrative jumps between illustrated prose describing her journey and comics-formatted informational sections that help visualize the society and the personalities and lives her work uncovers. Krug also incorporates photos and actual documents into the book, and that supplies a firm footprint in the real world that blends well with her artwork and handwriting.

Krug’s book is as valuable as it is personable, a reminder that humans are the ones living through history and that their lives seldom live up to the binary demands of our right or wrong way of thinking. Human life is more often a gray existence than one of stark values, and Krug is able to convey the breadth of the complications that make it so. It is not enough to say this person was a Nazi and capture the whole picture — a person is a creature of complexity that even one section of evil within them doesn’t necessarily dominate.

And so I consider Krug’s grandfather Willi as I think about the fervor in the 21st Century to define people by their worst aspects — say racism or sexism as two of the most common — and wonder despite the despicable parts whether we see the human or just the transgression. Is evil something we are or something we do? Can you be or do evil just by association, or is there more involved? And what are the consequences of defining evil in nationalistic terms? Is that not a myth that absolves everyone else’s evil?

I can only thank Krug for taking this project on — not just for putting herself and her family out there as fodder for the bigger questions, but actually asking the bigger questions as she goes through such a complicated, personal journey.

I unfortunately did not finish this before it expired, but read about a third of the way through. What I read was poignant and intriguing, a refreshing, accessible autobiography. I enjoyed the art style and the inclusion of real photographs and letters.

Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home is a powerful memoir by Nora Krug that is captivating both verbally and visually.

Nora Krug grew up in Germany and discusses what it was like learning about WWII and their country's atrocities. When in school, nothing was sugarcoated and there was a sense of collective guilt. Her parents were born after World War II, but the more she learned, the more curious she became as to the involvement of her grandparents and other relatives.

When she moved to the United States, her interest only grew; she wasn't proud of being a German and would try to hide her accent because of the reactions of others when they found out where she was from. But as she began to long for home, she wanted to dig into the family stories.

Heimat is a German word introduced early and returned to often, which refers to a place where you have familiarity, where you feel connected, where you belong.

"Perhaps the only way to find the HEIMAT that I've lost is to look back; to move beyond the abstract shame and ask those questions that are really difficult to ask -- about my own hometown, about my father's and my mother's families. To make my way back to the towns where each of them is from. To return to my childhood, go back to the beginning, follow the bread crumbs, and hope they'll lead the way home." (page 54)

So begins Krug's return to Germany as she visits where her grandparents lived during the war, searching the archives, conducting interviews, and unearthing the truth. It's an engaging book that is an important read as we all weigh how events throughout history and our family's involvement in them shape us.

I was intrigued by how the graphic novel format would convey the information, and I was suitably impressed. I've been reading books on drawing techniques and artistic journaling, and this book was a feast for the eyes. Nora Krug is a skilled artist and I felt as if I was reading someone's personal accounts in their journal, illustrated with all the care you see in adept bullet journal aficionados (let that comparison not take away Nora Krug's skill -- she is talented, and I also follow some bujo artists, so the connection is meant to be a fine compliment). The use of photos, sketches, dried flowers, even images of medals and wood carvings, make this a rich tribute.

I experienced this in a digital form, and while it was a rich, beautiful work, I highly recommend, if possible, you read a physical copy. Some of the background images span two pages, so it's a richer experience if you can see it spread before you.

(I received a digital ARC from NetGalley and Scribner in exchange for my honest review.)

A powerful memoir examining life in Postwar Germany for the Krug family. Connections are made with family members never met, and Krug explores the nature of collective guilt and the meaning of homeland. Well written and meticulously researched, with poignant illustrations.

A poignant and moving look into the author's family history and national heritage. I felt connected with the author's story and I appreciate the depth she put into this look into her life.

This was such a stunning book for me. “Stunning” in that it affected me in a way I did not expect.

I have read lots of books about WWII—non-fiction, fiction, children’s & YA books, even a couple graphic novels/memoirs. Despite all that though, I had never given much thought to how that time period affects modern Germans. When I thought of post-war Germany at all it was mostly in relation to the Berlin Wall.

With Nora as my guide, however, I began to understand the struggle that many Germans face in terms of WWII. It is national and cultural shame on a level I had never considered. Now living with her husband in New York, Nora sets out to understand her Heimat (which from what I can tell means “homeland”). Using original artwork, photographs, and historic documents, the book delves into Nora’s own family past—particularly the lives of her paternal uncle and maternal grandfather—as she tries to come to terms with her own feeling of guilt and shame over events that took place decades before she was born.

The artwork is very striking and adds a lot to how the author shares her story. Also, sprinkled throughout the book are little things that the author misses from Germany like a specific brand of soap and hot water bottles. I found these little vignettes charming.

*I received a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Belonging was a narrative of the author's ancestry told by using non-traditional pieces of history.

I've truly never read a book formatted like this before. Not only was it entirely handwritten, it featured German schoolwork, old photographs, the author's illustrations, and more. It feels as-if I just read through a private scrapbook.

This story was not only unique in the way it was told but in the message it was conveying. As an American, I have never stopped to think about the shame Germans carry due to the Holocaust or the loss of each family's history. I found this to be both informational, interesting, and thought-provoking.

My major issue with this book was how scattered it often felt and the lack of a family tree. We had to keep track of A LOT of people and the relationships got very tangled. Nevertheless, piecing together ones life by other accounts was strangely fascinating and I recommend this to anyone interested in that point in time.

Beautifully drawn memoir about an ex-pat German who revisits her youth and education to explore how she was acculturated in post-WWII Germany.

I thought this would be interesting in the beginning but I quickly lost passion in this book and felt that it would be better for a different reader.

This was an incredible read. Krug comes to terms with the history of her country and her family. Growing up in Germany then moving to the US as an adult, Krug tries to reconcile the stories of her grandparents during WWII with the facts of what happened. She also uses this time to reconstruct an idea of what her uncle, who died in the war at age 18 and whom her father was named after, was actually like. History, memory, family and cultural guilt all come into play in a graphic memoir that is interesting and moving.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free digital copy!

In Belonging, Nora Krug wrestles with questions about what we inherit and the ways we can (and can't) heal. Though this account was deeply rooted in Nora's family history and her questions about her grandparents during WWII, I (a Southern American) found it deeply relatable and touching. All families have fractures, and Nora's narrative did full justice to the longing to understand and to reconcile that sometimes comes when you inherit the pieces.

I loved the multimedia feel of this book, too. The use of different textures, scans, illustrations, and handwritten text made the story feel tactile, engaging, and personal in a way that would have been lost if it were just typed in plain text.

A quietly vibrant memoir that will make you ponder.

I am almost overwhelmed at the depth and intensity of this graphic memoir. My husband is a second generation German American, his father was born in Germany shortly before the end of WWII and his mother is of Jewish heritage. As a child, my husband wasn’t taught German and learned very little of his father’s family, never heard stories of the homeland. Reading this book felt like peeking behind an unspoken curtain into some inkling of my father-in-law’s thoughts. I was absolutely captivated both for Krug and myself. I will share this digital advanced copy with my husband and hope to build the courage to share a copy with my father-in-law after publication.

This is a poignant tale of a woman searching for a place to belong and connect despite the pain and hard times her native country (Germany) went through and created.
Nora wrestles with questions like, "Can I be proud to be German?" and "What impact do the choices my extended family made during WWII have on me?"

The combination of historical pictures, family heirlooms, handwritten notes, and documents make you feel as though you are traveling along with Nora. The book doesn't have a neat, tidy ending with all of the answers because that isn't real life.

I would highly recommend reading this book.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.