Nazi Germany is one of the most studied and fictionalised eras in human history, so much so that it feels like we know all there is to know from both the perpetrators’ and survivors’ points of view. Barbara Yelin’s graphic novel Irmina, however, offers a lesser-seen perspective: a bystander’s. Named after, and based on the life of, Yelin’s grandmother, the story follows Irmina from Stuttgart to London in the mid-1930s, where she befriends Howard, a smart and charming Oxford student from Barbados.

Financial problems force Irmina to return to Germany right as Hitler’s power is consolidated, and though she attempts to return to Howard in England, she ends up trapped in her motherland. Gradually, the ambitious and independent young woman who wanted to travel the world is chipped away into the ideal Nazi wife and mother: a dutiful homemaker who looks the other way when Jewish shops and homes are destroyed. The conundrum at the heart of Irmina is an endlessly ponderable one, regarding this tumultuous time: what would we have done?

In England, Irmina defended Howard from racism, only to allow herself to be swallowed up by even worse rhetoric in Germany. Yelin sets the tone and feel of this geographical and ideological shift beautifully in bluey smears of pastel and paint: England is light, airy, full of promise while Germany is dark, heavy, suffocating. Double-page spreads often drown Irmina in angry crowds or smoggy streets. She becomes small, lost, part of the scenery. It characterises her indoctrination as less of a full-blown lobotomy and more of catatonic state to endure and deflect the horrors around her. 

Some might say this makes Irmina a villain in her own story – that someone who chooses inaction is tantamount to condemning others. But the strength of Yelin’s storytelling is the greyness of her grandmother’s character, as clouded as the ashy remains of a defeated Third Reich. While you yearn for Irmina to find a way out, it’s hard to blame her for staying, or rule out the possibility that if we were in her shoes, we might not be so brave either.