We Are On Our Own: A Memoir

by Miriam Katin

Overview

A crisis of faith follows a mother and daughter in this beautifully rendered, harrowing WWII memoir

With the heartrending We Are on Our Own, Miriam Katin recounts the story of her escape from German-occupied Hungary as a child, led by her determined mother. The two fled Budapest near the end of WWII and at the age of sixty-three Katin enshrined her memory in these extraordinary pages, originally published in hardcover more than fifteen years ago.

In 1944, Miriam is a toddler beloved by her dog Rexy, but when her mother is forced to give up their “Jewish dog” to the German authorities, Miriam’s world begins to unravel. The two flee to the countryside after faking their deaths and traversing lands blanketed with snow. Miriam’s fragmented childhood memories of forests, chocolate, strange men, and the noise of war are reconstituted in this beautifully told epic journey where the innocence of a child is set against unthinkable violence.

Another crisis, one of faith, haunts the severed family on their path. Struggling to reunite with Miriam’s father who has been conscripted to the Hungarian army, mother and daughter contemplate God, wondering how He could allow such destruction. Poetic words of the Torah combine with images of war as Miriam examines the theological dilemma both victims as well as survivors of the Shoah. When Miriam and her mother hide with a winemaker, they soothe their nerves with the tonic, reciting “God is red. God is in the glass.” God, they understand, is in the very human will to survive, and in that pursuit of survival, we are truly on our own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770466357
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Pages:	136
Sales rank:	642,005
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Miriam Katin was born in Hungary during World War II. She later immigrated to Israel and then the United States, where she worked in background design for animation studios such as MTV and Disney. She is also the author of the award-winning memoir Letting It Go. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and a giant Ficus benjamina tree.

Editorial Reviews

Miriam Katin brings her masterful eye and hand to this urgent story, bringing a level of detail and complexity that only one who experienced these ordeals can know. We are lucky to have this book, which now rightly resides in the canon of graphic works on the Shoah and the Second World War. Read it and know.” —Leela Corman, We All Wish for Deadly Force

“We Are On Our Own is a harrowing story of survival and resilience, told masterfully through Katin’s gorgeous colored pencil drawings. An important work by a brilliant cartoonist.” —Sarah Glidden, Rolling Blackouts

“Katin’s art is an impressionistic swirl; early scenes in sophisticated Budapest recall the elegance of Helen E. Hokinson, while the chaos of war is captured in dark, chaotic compositions reminiscent of Käthe Kollwitz. This book is a powerful reminder of the lingering price of survival.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Nearly 20 years have elapsed since its debut, and yet Katin's powerful memoir remains necessary testimony against persistent antisemitism.” —Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

“Katin's art in We Are On Our Own is as beautiful and haunting as the story.” —BlogCritics

“We Are On Our Own is not only about the evils that befell Jews under Nazi rule, but the horror the conquering Soviet army perpetrated on the Hungarians they were freeing. What the work does show is Esther’s resilience and her desire to protect her child at all costs.” —The Reporter

From the Publisher

This moving WWII memoir is the debut graphic novel from Katin, an animator for Disney and MTV. It tells the story of toddler Katin-here called Lisa-and her mother, Esther Levy, Hungarian Jews who must flee Nazi persecution. With her husband off fighting in the Hungarian army, Esther is forced to abandon all their belongings and take on the identity of a servant girl with a bastard child. She survives however she can-whether making alterations on the bloodstained uniforms of dead soldiers or surrendering her body to an adulterous German officer. Katin shows Esther's harrowing experiences with an objective eye, but her own experience of the time is the fragmented memory of a child; unable to understand the vast tragedy unfolding around her, she focuses on the loss of a pet dog. The story flashes forward to the '70s and even later to show the long-term effects on Katin and her family's faith. Katin's art is an impressionistic swirl; early scenes in sophisticated Budapest recall the elegance of Helen Hokinson, while the chaos of war is captured in dark, chaotic compositions reminiscent of Kathe Kollwitz. This book is a powerful reminder of the lingering price of survival. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Mother and daughter go on the run in Nazi-occupied Hungary, then endure the Russian occupation. It would be difficult to conceive of Katin's debut as anything but a graphic novel, given the strength of its visuals, but a straight-text approach might have been wiser. Her story is obviously dramatic. In Budapest circa 1944, when Miriam is a young girl, her mother, Esther, decides to avoid the impending Nazi roundup of Jews by faking their deaths and escaping to the countryside with forged papers. But things hardly improve outside the city, where villagers treat them no better in their new identities, taking their dark features to mean they're gypsies. To make matters worse, a Nazi officer quickly figures out the Katins' secret and uses it as a means of prying sexual favors from Esther. Hard circumstances turn desperate once the Red Army sweeps through, exhibiting the morals of drunken Vikings; Esther joins the starving, freezing villagers as they take clothes off soldiers' corpses. She does her best to conceal all these horrific events from little Miriam, though the best she can manage is to induce a sort of baffled confusion. Katin's episodic approach conveys events with an admirable economy at times, but often just hurries the reader through situations that could have used more explanation or context. The artwork's smeared, sketchy quality contributes to this sense of undue haste. It may be that Katin chose the graphic form because of her background (she was a graphic artist in Israel and a background designer for Disney and MTV) rather than because it was the best vehicle for her story. However, the author's pain is difficult to ignore, regardless of the limitations of her approach andher sometimes melodramatic tone. A problematic but powerful Holocaust survival memoir.

Kirkus Reviews