Maus Compare And Contrast Essay

The authors of the books, Survival in Auschwitz, All But My Life, and Maus II, tell their heart-wrenching, brutal, and hopeful journey of their lives throughout the Holocaust. Though, the stories are written regarding the same historical event, their paths lead to strikingly different outcomes. Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, was sent to Auschwitz where he endured years of the Nazi’s brutality and the horrific images that followed. Art Spiegelman’s Maus II tells the story of how his father, Vladek Spiegelman, survived the war. While Gerda Weissmann Klein describes her own journey in which World War II had taken her. Though these three authors describe very horrific, disgusting, and heartbreaking scenes from their experiences, their books end similarly,

with their liberation by the Allied forces.
Primo Levi’s story is particularly gruesome as he wrote it soon after he was liberated, allowing him to recollect a great amount of the details to his experience. Levi’s last few months of the war are easily the most disturbing of the whole experience. He is quite fortunate because he holds a good job in a laboratory, where it is warm, sheltered, and free of beatings. However, on January 11, Levi had come down with scarlet fever and was admitted to Ka-Be. He was sent to a room occupied by twelve others whom were also suffering from severe illnesses such as scarlet fever, typhus, and diphtheria. Levi was thankful, even as he writhed with sickness, because he had a bunk to himself and still felt strong enough to pass selections and not to fear the consequences of scarlet fever. On Levi’s fifth day in Ka-be, the barber had come to shave the sick. When it was his turn, Levi asked him in Italian if there was any news, “he stopped shaving me, winked in a serious and allusive manner, pointed to the window with his chin, and then made a sweeping gesture with his hand toward the west.” Levi did not want to react to this news, as he did not want to get his hopes up only to be disappointed. However, this news proved to be true only a few days later.
The Germans began to evacuate the prisoners on January 18th, 1945, leaving behind the sick and dying, including Levi. On January 18, it became clear that the war front had drawn closer to the camp. “Two huts were burning fiercely, another two had been pulverized, but they were all empty. Dozens of patients arrived, naked and wretched, from a hut threatened by fire: they asked for shelter.” As the camp was desolate from the dead, or the bombings, Levi and his companions in Ka-be were left to fend for themselves. They set out about the camp in search of food and a way to supply warmth in order to stay healthy and living. On January 25, Levi sat with Charles and Arthur around the stove and spoke of their lives with each other, Levi states, “In the evening, around the stove, Charles, Arthur, and I felt ourselves become men once again. We could speak of everything.” Finally, came liberation for Levi, on January 27, 1945 , the Russians arrived to the camp to liberate Levi and his comrades, who had survived the horrific scenes of Auschwitz.
Vladek Spiegelman’s liberation experience differs very dramatically from Levi’s.

In the months leading up to liberation, Spiegelman continued to work in the camp to the best of his ability. However, as the Russian front edged closer to Auschwitz, many of the German officials ran off in fear they would be killed and rumors spread to the prisoners that the Germans were planning on taking the prisoners back to camps inside Germany. Vladek, along with a few other prisoners, plotted to hide in an abandoned room inside the camp to escape the officials and their brutality. However, while hiding they heard that the camp would be bombed, so they decided to march alongside the rest of the prisoners, where their fate would soon be decided. Throughout the march those who were tired, or could not walk fast were shot. They marched from Auschwitz, in Poland, to Gross-Rosen, in Germany. Gross-Rosen was a small camp with thousands of prisoners being pushed back into Germany. The next morning, however, the Germans marched them out once more to trains made for shipping animals. In this train, they pushed as many people as they could into one car. Vladek used the blanket they had given him to create a sort of hammock to rest on and provide some space for himself. “This saved me. Maybe 25 people came out from this car of 200.” Finally, the train had begun to make its way to Dachau, where Vladek’s troubles truly began. In Dachau, he experienced lice and with lice came typhus. In order for the prisoners to receive their ration of soup, they must show their shirt, if you had no lice you would receive your ration of food. However, it deemed impossible to be free of lice, as lice lived in the straw where they slept. After Vladek spent some time in the infirmary, he happened to meet a Frenchman interested in speaking English with him. Each day the Frenchman found Vladek to share his Red Cross package with him, this is yet another gesture in which Vladek claims to have saved his life. A

few weeks later, Vladek became very ill with typhus and was too sick to eat. As his fever began to fall, an order arrived from the Germans: “Everyone strong enough to travel, line up outside you will be exchanged as war prisoners at the Swiss border” Vladek exchanged his bread to have two men help him walk outside to the gates. “Here was a train not for cows and horses, but a real train to take passengers—a train for people!” On his travels toward liberation, Vladek ran into a friend from Sosnowiec, Shivek. Throughout this night, the prisoners thought for sure they’d be killed after being captured again by the Gestapo, however in the morning everyone was still alive. Shivek and Vladek, eventually come across a vacant house with a barn, and they decided to hide there and wait out the war. They saw villagers running away, and shortly after bombs went off nearby causing part of the barn to fall apart. Once things calmed down, Vladek went into the house and brought back milk, chickens, and clothes for himself and Shivek. “There! I’m starting to feel human again!” Vladek states once he’s dressed in real clothes. Finally, the Americans came and rescued them. At last Vladek was a free man, and human once again. Vladek experiences liberation with a breath of relief as the Americans give them food to eat and talk to them like humans. Vladek feels very happy when the Americans show they like him and give him gifts, this makes him feel like he is living again.
Similarly to Levi and Spiegelman, Gerda Weissmann Klein’s experience in the camps grew worse as the Allied forces drew closer in on Germany. As the Allies invaded Germany, Grunberg’s population increased by about 4,000, as young women were arrived from other camps. Shortly after, the Germans began to march the women to a new concentration camp. Only after a few days of marching, girls had died of starvation or from the cold. They marched for weeks through Zwickau, Reichenbach, and Plauen, until they finally arrived at Helmbrechts. Gerda states, “We were two hundred and fifty kilometers or more beyond Dresden, more than five hundred from Grunberg.” Helmbrechts was completely surrounded by fences topped with electrified wire and the food was meager. The conditions in Helmbrechts were particularly horrible as the women all became ill with diarrhea and were given little food. Gerda begins to discuss the deaths she witnessed in Helmbrechts and says, “It was strange: some days hardly anyone died, other days we lost many.” Helmbrechts’ barracks were infested with lice and they were not given blankets or bunks to sleep in. Gerda describes the dreaded nights, “Without bunks or blankets, we had nothing but the earthen floor to lie on. Shivering, our bones aching, we huddled in groups and we waited for the dawn.”
Only after one month at Helmbrechts, they began to march to cross the Czechoslovakian border. Conditions only grew worse for the women on the march, “We slept outside that night. It was very cold, and the evidence could be seen in the morning in the many stiff bodies on the ground.” Ilse, Gerda’s childhood friend, died on the march, “I held her hand tightly, and we both fell asleep again. When I woke, it was getting light. Ilse’s hand was cold. Her eyes were half open. She no longer breathed.” Gerda continues with Suse and Liesel. Eventually, the women arrive to a town in Czechoslovakia named Volary , where they are locked inside a factory where the Germans leave a bomb outside. Throughout the night, the women hear the bomb ticking with nothing to do about it.
In the morning, some Czech people broke open the door and told them to run because the SS will be back to kill them. Gerda, Suse, and Liesel hid in a long metal cylinder laying on the ground, where they waited for hours as the shooting in the distance drew closer. Finally, they come out when they hear a Czech man shouting: “If someone is inside, come out. The war is over!” The Czechs took the girls to a makeshift hospital built by the American soldiers and the Red Cross, and from a window Gerda sees, “The white flag of peace waved gently from its steeple.” American soldiers liberate Gerda in September 1945. Following liberation, Gerda meets Kurt Klein, an American soldier who visits her everyday she is in the hospital. Gerda eventually moves to Buffalo, New York with Kurt and marries him.
In conclusion, though the people and their experiences can differ, the stories of liberation seem to be relieving and joyous. These three recollections of experiences in the Holocaust are strikingly different in many aspects, however the messages and purposes these have been written prove to be very similar, if not the same. From Levi’s solitary survival, to Spiegelman’s lucky escape, to Klein’s “fairy-tale” liberation, these three authors proved to tell a story of survival, and heroism. Without hope and faith, these survivors may have not survived.