Maus: A Survivor's Tale (Art Spiegelman)

The Holocaust has always had a place in my mind as a tragic, sad, incredibly important moment in human history, but one that has also always been inaccessible and foreign to me.

I guess I studied it in school. I vaguely remember an animated history teacher trying to capture the realities of concentration camp life during a classroom exercise. But I’ve had no real portal or entry point to achieve a personal connection to what took place. After reading “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” by Art Spiegelman, I feel differently.

True, no one in my family lived through that ordeal. None of my relatives ever sheltered Jews or fled the Nazis. But this Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel has given me a new insight and allowed me to connect in a new way to the events that led up to, and occurred during, the Second World War.

Told in two volumes, “Maus” is the story of Spiegelman’s father Vladek’s experience living through the Holocaust and struggling to survive, narrowly escaping death numerous times, watching almost all of his family and friends die at the hands of the Nazis. It’s gripping and haunting and all the more touching because it’s based on a true story.

In Spiegelman’s unique treatment of this story, the Jews are portrayed as mice and the Nazis as cats. Done badly, this technique could have come across as tacky or insensitive. But it doesn’t. It only takes a page or two to just accept it. And it really is effective – as seen through Jewish eyes, the Nazis really were ruthless predators with little sympathy for their prey. And the Jews, at least in Vladek’s experience, were the hunted – hiding out, trying desperately to avoid drawing attention to themselves and with little or no resources to protect or defend against the enemy.

The first page of Book 1, titled “My Father Bleeds History,” has a grim image of dozens of Jews staring towards a single point. They’re well-dressed and stoic but there’s a common look of fear and bewilderment in their eyes, as if they know there’s something foreboding on the horizon, but they have no idea what form it will take.

Book 2, “And Here My Troubles Began,” begins with another image of dozens of Jews, all men this time, wearing matching prison stripes. Their eyes are also staring towards a single point but this time their eyes display a glazed-over muted fear and it’s clear they have seen terrible things and have little hope for a happy ending.

And through Vladek’s recounting of the central story of his life, we experience these deeds first hand – murder, extermination, genocide – all the worst things that come to mind when one thinks of the Holocaust, are represented in Vladek’s story.

But "Maus" doesn’t just dwell on the past. It flips between the images of the past and the present as Art and Vladek try to bridge the generational and cultural divide that separates them and causes friction.

“Just thinking about my book – it’s so presumptuous of me,” Spiegelman says to his wife in one of their conversations.

“I mean, I can’t even make any sense out of my relationship with my father. How am I supposed to make any sense out of Auschwitz, of the Holocaust?”

But somehow, you see them getting closer through the course of this book. Over the years it took to collect the entire story and set it down. Something does happen. Art does, somehow, make sense out of his relationship with his father and why he is the way he is, by extension, why he has become the man he is.

Through asking and learning and trying, despite the obvious difficulties of doing so, he achieves some sort of understanding, some sort of reconciliation, and that achievement gives this story – which becomes as much his as his father’s – legitimacy and credibility.

And somehow I was taken along for the ride on Spiegelman’s journey and gained my own new connection and understanding of this moment in history and its real impact on real lives.