Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of discrimination, physical/emotional abuse, and death.

The opening page describes the Hansaplast, a bandage invented in the 1920s that was more reliable than almost anything. Nora Krug arrived in New York City from her home city of Berlin, Germany, relieved to start fresh in a place filled with possibility. One night, while Krug stood on the roof watching the sunset with a new friend, an elderly woman asked where she was from. When Krug answered Germany, the woman revealed that she was in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. A brutal female guard saved her from the gas chambers 16 times, and the woman suspected the guard must have had a crush on her. Krug was silent as she listened, and the woman concluded by saying that Krug seems to have been raised well, so things must have changed. Krug still did not know what to say. Accompanying photographs show nine notorious female guards who worked in the camps, each responsible for many deaths.

Krug explores her childhood and the confusion she felt surrounding her heritage, the war, and the Holocaust. She grew up in a city called Karlsruhe next to a US military base where planes constantly flew overheard, and from a young age she had the sense that something was not quite right.