Black Liberators


This new blog series is about the Black Liberators – the African American soldiers who helped liberate Western Europe during the Second World War. We discuss the Black Liberators exhibition at the Dutch Institute for War-, Holocaust- and Genocide-studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam, the graphic novel ‘Franklin – A Dutch Liberation Story’ and interview a number of people who have been involved in these projects.


Kees Ribbens – Comics and Popular History Kees Ribbens – Comics and Popular History    |   By Jonathan Pieterse
  Kees Ribbens is a big comic book fan. He has a large collection of comic books, many of them about World War II and so I interviewed him about his involvement with Franklin – A Dutch Liberation Story. He is also a senior researcher at the NIOD, the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and […]
March 25, 2020

Brian Elstak – Art, Racism and the Black Liberators Brian Elstak – Art, Racism and the Black Liberators    |   By Jonathan Pieterse
  For the first instalment of this blog about the Black Liberators, I interviewed Brian Elstak. Not only did he contribute to the Black Liberators exhibition at the NIOD (temporarily closed), he’s also the illustrator of the graphic novel Franklin – A Dutch Liberation Story. It tells the fictional story of the African American soldier […]
March 18, 2020