A Different Front
The English GI and an Unexpected Jewish Vantage Point on WWII
One of the motivating ideas behind the Jewish Comics Library of Seattle is the documentation and encouragement of cultural artifacts in the form of graphic novels and comics. These stories reflect Jewish life in all its variety, from Holocaust narratives to memoirs of everyday life, from biographies to histories of political struggle. Among them, memoir has become a particularly fertile form, allowing artists and writers to explore personal memory, family stories, and hidden corners of Jewish experience.
A recent addition to this growing field is The English GI: World War II Graphic Memoir of a Yorkshire Schoolboy’s Adventures in the United States and Europe, created by Jonathan Sandler and illustrated by Brian Bicknell. The book is based on the wartime journals of Sandler’s grandfather, Bernard Sandler, a Jewish teenager from Leeds UK, whose life took an extraordinary turn on the eve of World War II.
At 17, Bernard was visiting the United States with other students from his Yorkshire high school when England declared war on Nazi Germany. Suddenly he was stranded in America, transatlantic travel made perilous by U-boat attacks. Luckily he was able to find refuge with family friends in New York City. There, he finished high school, began college at NYU, and eventually joined the American military. His journey from a British schoolboy to an American GI offers a rare and compelling Jewish perspective on the war, one shaped not by survival of the Holocaust, but by an indirect orbit around it.
What makes The English GI especially engaging is the hybrid nature of its storytelling. Much of the narrative is told through traditional comics form, while interwoven throughout are historical documents, photographs, and excerpts from Bernard's own journal. The result is both visually rich and emotionally grounded—a reconstruction of memory filtered through the collaborative work of grandson and illustrator.
There’s a kinship here with other works that use inherited or recovered stories to animate graphic memoir. Trina Robbins’ A Minyen Yidn (Un Andere Zacken) illustrates stories written by her father in Yiddish—stories she only came to appreciate after having them translated later in life. And in When I Grow Up, Ken Krimstein adapts real-life autobiographies of young Jews from the 1930s Pale of Settlement, what Krimstein named Yiddishuania, that were submissions to a YIVO contest whose authors perished in the Holocaust before their words could reach the world.
In The English GI, Sandler undertakes a similar act of resurrection, bringing to light a family history that may otherwise have remained confined to private memory. The book reminds us that there are still stories to be uncovered from the World War II era that challenge the dominant frames of heroism, trauma, and survival. This is not a Holocaust story, but it’s one deeply entangled with that time, and all the more valuable for its singular vantage point.
Readers interested in the many ways Jewish memory gets passed down—from journals to drawings, from grandparents to grandchildren—will find The English GI a welcome addition to the growing shelf of graphic memoirs that map our history not just through suffering, but through witness, diaspora, and the surprise of second chances.
This book fits squarely within the mission of the Jewish Comics Library of Seattle: to collect, preserve, and promote graphic narratives that reflect the diversity of Jewish life and experience. The English GI is an appreciated addition to the collection, an unexpected but resonant story that broadens our understanding of Jewish memory during World War II.
You can see this, other memoirs and the entire collection at our next Pop Up Library event this Friday at the Couth Buzzard Bookstore, 8310 Greenwood Ave N, from 11:00 AM-3:00 PM.
And don’t miss our author meet and greet on Monday, May 26!
