Solomon J. Brager’s debut graph­ic mem­oir, Heavy­weight, con­tends with the inter­gen­er­a­tional trans­mis­sion of Holo­caust trau­ma. Trou­bled by silences in tes­ti­monies and archives, Brager strug­gles to piece togeth­er a his­to­ry that their great-grand­moth­er hes­i­tates to dis­cuss ful­ly. How­ev­er, unlike oth­er mem­oirs about a family’s Holo­caust his­to­ry, Brager exam­ines the ways in which cer­tain priv­i­leges — such as mon­ey, pow­er, and gen­der — allowed their great-grand­par­ents to escape Ger­many at the height of Nazism. Con­fronting their family’s access to priv­i­lege and the gaps in the archive reveal to Brager the entan­gle­ments of dis­pos­ses­sion and empire that con­tin­ue to rever­ber­ate to this day. Ulti­mate­ly, Heavy­weight argues that ​“his­tor­i­cal era­sures make way for present-day dis­pos­ses­sion.” And fight­ing against ongo­ing dis­pos­ses­sion, Brager sug­gests, requires that we con­front what the archive does — and, impor­tant­ly, what it does not — say. 

Brager’s main access to their family’s Holo­caust expe­ri­ence comes from their great-grand­moth­er, Ilse, whose tes­ti­mo­ny ​“lives” at the USC Shoah Foun­da­tion. As a mem­ber of the fourth gen­er­a­tion of Holo­caust sur­vivors, Brager does not have direct access to sur­vivors, and a cul­ture of silence in their fam­i­ly means that much of Brager’s work involves lis­ten­ing to Isle’s tes­ti­mo­ny and dig­ging into its gaps. How­ev­er, unbury­ing their family’s his­to­ry comes with unin­tend­ed con­se­quences, the most trou­bling of which is the dis­cov­ery of oth­er buried his­to­ries. In oth­er words, Brager finds them­selves haunt­ed not only by their family’s Holo­caust sur­vival, but also by the ways in which that sur­vival is due in part to their family’s access to privilege. 

For exam­ple, Ilse and Erich, Brager’s great-grand­par­ents, both came from wealthy fam­i­lies whose for­tunes were built in large part on the back of the Ger­man empire and the exploita­tion of African peo­ples. Their access to wealth and upper-mid­dle-class con­nec­tions meant that they could afford the often dizzy­ing­ly expen­sive escape routes. For exam­ple, after a har­row­ing jour­ney to Por­tu­gal, Ilse and Erich bought first-class tick­ets to board a pas­sen­ger ship to the Unit­ed States. The cost? Eight thou­sand dol­lars. Their wealth meant they could afford these pricey first-class tick­ets to safe­ty, the only tick­ets still avail­able. Though the ship had the space, only those with the means to trav­el first-class could escape.

Brager con­nects this knowl­edge to their own life in Brook­lyn, where his­tor­i­cal­ly Black neigh­bor­hoods and spaces have been quite lit­er­al­ly paved over in the process of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion. Heavy­weight is there­fore an exam­i­na­tion not only of one family’s escape from the Holo­caust, but also of the ways in which dis­pos­ses­sions of all kinds have shaped the present moment. For Brager, uncov­er­ing the gaps in their family’s archive means con­fronting uncom­fort­able truths. It means nam­ing these gaps in his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives in the pur­suit of jus­tice. After all, the ​“way we treat the dead tells us a lot about our regard for the living.”