Maus: Volumes
I & 2
Art Spiegelman
Thirteen years in the making, Maus
is Art Spiegelman's masterpiece, a
two-volume graphic novel which tells
the story of his father Vladek
Spiegelman's life in Poland during
World War II, with Jews cast as mice
and Nazis as cats. Two narrative
threads are woven: Vladek's
harrowing account of life in
occupied Poland and Art's
relationship to his father as he
visits him in Queens to tape record
his history. Through wit, cunning,
unbelievable resourcefulness, and,
above all, luck, Spiegelman's
parents made it out of Auschwitz
alive, but their struggle for
survival didn't end there.
For his father, survival comes down
to counting pills and nursing a weak
heart amid the breakup of his second
marriage. For Art, survival means
trying to keep his head together as
he struggles to come to terms with
the story he is telling, his
mother's 1968 suicide, and the
second-hand survivor's guilt he gets
from his father who throughout Art's
childhood kept a picture of
Richieu--the brother Art never knew
who was poisoned in order to avoid
the camps--as a silent reproach to
all with the audacity to keep
living.
- Maus:
Volume I: My Father Bleeds
History
Covers the
period from mid-1930's to winter
1944. Vladek marries Anja and is
set up in business by his
father-in-law, but the good
times come to an end when the
Nazis invade Poland and the
deportation of Jews begins.
The large family is dispersed
and Vladek and Anja fare well in
hiding but are double-crossed
when they try to escape to
Hungary. This volume ends at the
infamous entry to Auschwitz,
with the optimistic lie Arbeit
Macht Frei ("Work will set
you free") wrought in iron above
the gates.
-
Maus:
Volume II: And Here My
Troubles Began
As if what
was recounted in Volume I
weren't troubles. Senseless
violence, inhuman cruelty,
bureaucratized death. Vladek
and Anja survive it all,
avoiding the ovens by the
slenderest of margins. Instead
of statistics, we are given
intimate glimpses of the
day-to-day hardships and
dangers of life in
the camp. If you fancy
yourself a survivor, read this
and then assess what your
chances for making it through
would have been. I rate my own
as zero.
Art listens as Vladek relates.
This Way
for the Gas, Ladies and
Gentlemen
Tadeusz Borowski
The politeness of
the title reflects a historical
fact: Nazi guards and their
prisoner accomplices (who did most
of the dirty work) very often
maintained an air of cordialty
which kept the imminent
executions of new arrivals a
secret from them until the moment
when gas, not water, issued from
the showerheads in the "bath
house."
..."What's
the trouble, Moise?"
I said. "You seem out
of sorts."
"I've got
some new pictures of my
family."
"That's good!
Why should it upset you?"
"Good? Hell!
I've sent my own father to
the oven!"
"Impossible!"
"Possible,
because I have. He came
with a transport, and saw
me in front of the gas
chamber. I was lining up
the people. He threw his
arms around me, and began
kissing me and asking,
what's going to happen. He
told me he was hungry
because they'd been riding
for two days without any
food. But right away the
Kommandofuhrer yells at me
not to stand around, to
get back to work. What was
I to do? "Go on, Father,"
I said, "wash yourself in
the bath-house and then
we'll talk. Can't you see
I'm busy now?" So my
father went on to the gas
chamber. And later I found
the pictures in his coat
pocket. Now tell me,
what's so good about my
having the pictures?"
We laughed.
"Anyway, it's lucky they
don't gas Aryans any
longer. Anything but
that!"
--from
"Auschwitz, Our Home (A
Letter)"
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Borowski was a Polish Aryan
poet who was imprisoned for
attending secret meetings where he
and other writers discussed books.
He was carrying a copy
of Brave New World
when he was arrested. He arrived
at Auschwitz only three weeks
after they stopped gassing Aryans,
but this did not mean his survival
was a sure thing. To better his
prospects and keep from
starving, he worked the platforms
where new prisoners were unloaded
from boxcars. The Nazis used
inmates in this capacity to lull
arrivals into a false sense of
security as well as to further
diffuse their own sense of
responsibility. Keeping victims in
the dark as to their fates made
the type of revolt which occured
at Sobibor
less likely.
The short stories in this
collection (published immediately
after the war) detail daily life
in the camps where death is a
matter of routine and
all pretense of culture or
civilization has been abandoned.
This unflinching account suspends
judgment, depicting atrocities
with a journalistic detachment
which neither romanticizes the
victims nor demonizes the
functionaries of death, who, like
Borowski, were often one in the
same.
Tadeusz Borowski gassed himself
in a kitchen oven in 1951, just
days before the birth of his first
child.
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