Through the Eyes of One Survivor

Not sure whether to help those in need or protect yourself: that was the tearing dilemma that Vladek and Anja Spiegelman were confronted with during the Holocaust. The novel MAUS by Art Spiegelman gives its readers not only a book for words, but a book for watching, watching what events took place during Hilter’s Europe. Art Spiegelman, known as Artie, picks through his father, Vladek’s, brain and gives his audience a story of a memorable experience of trust, reunion, and polar opposites of betrayal and separation along with starvation, torture, and ultimately survival during the mass murdering of over 6 million Jewish people. This graphic novel infiltrates a vivid portrait of race, warfare, and power during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s leading up to World War II and the Holocaust through the minds of a survivor.

Nazis versus Jews: Predator versus pray; Jews are less than human to the Nazis during this time period and so they are depicted as mice, while the Germans are cats. The Nazi propaganda of this time portrayed the Jews as vermin and unworthy of being treated equally. Shows and animated films of this era were flourishing with racial caricatures and with this, all of the different ethnicities were portrayed to the audience as different animals that were “suiting for their kind”. The different animal figures is not to show that Jews are good and the Germans are bad; it is to show that race and ethnicity is not reducible to one specific characteristic or another. Some Jews are good, some are bad; some Poles are good, some are bad; some Germans are good, some are bad. Even though Jews should be Jews and Poles should be Poles that did not always occur. Jews and their councils complied with their occupiers, some Jews tricked...

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...y affect many even though they did not experience this firsthand. Art Spiegelman was one of these people, and he even feels guilty that his parents were forced to live through this trauma and he grew up in an easier, more comfortable world. The story of the Holocaust in the form of a graphic novel through the eyes of a survivor and seeing the effects reflected on those close to him helped me understand the battle of predator versus pray of the Nazis and the Jews. The events tear at my heartstrings and even though it was a moment in history that changed the world forever, the inhumanity of these men and women was sickening and it aches to know they seemed to feel no remorse for the innocent.

Works Cited

Spiegelman, A. (1991). Maus I: a survivor’s tale. New York: Pantheon Books.

Spiegelman, A. (1991). Maus II: and here my troubles began. New York: Pantheon Books.