BOOKS
Maus: A Survivor’s
Tale; My Father Bleeds History
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale; And Here My Troubles Began
Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale; My Father Bleeds History Volume I. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. ISBN: 0394747232.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale; And Here My Troubles Began Volume II. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. ISBN: 0679729771.
REVIEW
For the past several years, I have used Art Spiegelman’s biographical/autobiographical comic strip Maus in teaching the Holocaust to high school students. I first came to know this fascinating work of social science (it deals with history obviously; some might find it useful for sociology, psychology, and anthropology) as a college student upon release of the first volume in 1986. Originally serialized in the pages of the underground comic magazine Raw (which Spiegelman edited) in the late 1970’s-early 1980’s, Pantheon Books collected the first six installments into paperback. A comic book aficionado, I bought my copy of this work in the history section of a mainstream bookstore. I read it in one sitting – it is the proverbial “page-turner”. Volume Two was released in 1992.
Students from 9th-12th grades really connect with the characters in Maus. From the fore-shadowing introductory pages, kids are drawn into the relationship between Art Spiegelman and his father, Vladek. They want to know why Vladek is so gruff and why he is seemingly distant from his son. As the first chapter unfolds, the reader gets right into Art’s dysfunc-tional family and finds Vladek’s life story played out. A well-to-do textile salesman, Vladek eventually marries into a wealthy Polish family. From there, Spiegelman details the slow spiral down into the Nazi-made hell that would become the lives of Jews in the 1930’s. Throughout these trials, Vladek comes to us not as the sometimes-nasty, often-irritating old man of the present (early 1970’s, actually), but a resourceful, wise, lucky, and compassionate planner who is most interested in preserving the family’s lives and existence as they know it. The reader also accustoms himself to Spiegelman’s style of showing the actual interviews he carried out with his father for the information he’d later use to write this very tome, and the past events that Spiegelman depicts from those interviews.
The tale winds through many Holocaust events, from legal harassment of Jews to attempts at emigration to hiding. Spiegelman does a particularly wonderful job of taking the reader into the hiding places. Using the taped interviews with his father, some of which included Vladek sketching details on paper, and cutaway drawings, Art is able to reconstruct for the reader’s imagination Jewish hiding places in a storage shed as well as a coal hopper. Volume Two chronicles the travails of both Spiegelman’s mother and father as inmates of Auschwitz. Their ability to survive is detailed, and truly hammers home the point that many survivors have made: the number one reason for survival was luck. Upon liberation, readers join with the Spiegelmans as they attempt to find information on relatives, as well as rebuild their lives.
Students at first balk at the notion that a Holocaust story is being told a) in comic book format, and b) with anthropomorphic animals as the characters. This feeling quickly subsides. By the end of the first chapter, it has been forgotten that there are even animals in the book, unless it comes up in discussion of Spiegelman’s metaphors. Slower readers/learners appreciate the pictures – it doesn’t seem to them like reading a factual work, yet they are as locked-in as anyone else in the classroom. Older students, even “gifted” students, also do well with the graphic novel – it doesn’t hold anyone back. In fact, my experience has been that students hate to stop at the end of the assignment! On more than a few occasions, I’ve had students tell me that they couldn’t wait until the next day to read again and so they spent an hour at the local Barnes & Noble reading ahead! Prospective teachers should be advised, too, that Spiegelman pulls no punches in terms of the use of violence, both graphic and implied, and language. A simple disclaimer before reading commences usually alleviates any problems.
PASSAGE/QUOTE FOR CLASSROOM USAGE
In Maus, as Art Spiegelman meets with his therapist over his confusion and lack of self-confidence in trying to accurately portray his father’s experiences as an inmate of Auschwitz, the therapist is asked just what it was like. Out of the clear blue, he lunges forward and shouts “BOO!” at the downcast Art, nearly dropping him to the floor. His response: “It felt a little like that, but always! From the moment you got to the gate until the very end” (Volume II 46). In the discussion just prior to this scene, the following exchange takes place:
Pavel: Sigh. I’m not talking about your book now, but look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What’s the point? People haven’t changed… Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust. Anyway, the victims who died can never tell their side of the story, so maybe it’s better not to have any more stories.
Art: Uh huh. Samuel Beckett once said: “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
Pavel: Yes.
-- long pause –
Art: On the other hand, he said it (Volume II 45).
And maybe that’s what Holocaust accounts do to the entire event: stain it. If indeed every attempt to explain it falls short for the non-survivor, if indeed it was “BOO!” every minute of every day, then can anyone ever grasp it?
RATIONALE FOR USAGE/UNIT RELEVANCE
Maus is a gripping Holocaust work for mature readers of all ages. It is a story about a family that could be yours, or your next-door neighbor. It fosters passionate discussion and intense debate. A Pulitzer prize-winning work, Maus should be read by all students of this dark time in our history. For the teacher who would like to do a survey unit on the events of the Shoah, it is all here – life before the war, as the German clamps come onto the Jews, hiding, ghettos, deportations, the camps, and liberation. And overriding all of this is a survivor’s experienced psychology and memories.
CLASSROOM METHOD OF USAGE
a.
What is a ________ like?
b.
Why would this animal represent this group?
c.
What is the historical relationship between
Jews and _______ that has lead to the relationships we’ll see in the
1930’s-’40’s?
a.
mice - Jews: pestilence, breed rapidly with
large amounts of offspring, live silently among people, hard to get rid of.
b.
cats - Germans: hunt mice, protect the home
from pestilence.
c.
pigs - Poles: Jews don’t eat pork and
consider the pig a dirty animal; for the prodigal son, having to take a job
living with pigs was for him the ultimate disgrace.
d.
fish - British: the British have been long
renowned for their navy.
e.
dogs - Americans: “man’s best friend”; the
liberators.
f.
frogs - French:
double meaning – frogs are slippery, slimy (Dreyfus Affair); frogs can change
into princes (Art’s wife, a Frenchman, converted to Judaism).
g.
reindeer - Scandinavians: from the north.
STUDY QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION GUIDE
Chapter One: The Sheik
Francoise = Fran-swa (Art’s wife)
Czestochowa = Sest-cho-va (a city)
Rudolph Valentino = silent film star of the 1920’s. A sex symbol and the object of much Hollywood gossip. Starred in a famous film titled “The Sheik”
Sosnowiec = Sos-no-vee-ac (a city)
Chapter Two: The Honeymoon
Bielsko = Bell-sko (a city)
Zlotys = Polish currency
Richieu = Ree-shoo (Vladek and Anja’s oldest son, Art’s older brother)
Kilo = unit of weight; kilogram. 2.2 pounds is equal to 1 kilogram
Pogrom = government-sponsored persecution of minority groups (especially Jews), including property damage and physical abuse
Sanitarium = mental hospital
Anti-Semitic = a term referring to Jews and other minority groups; the term itself was coined by the German Wilhelm Marr in 1879, but "semitic" dates back to the ancient Hebrew period, when the people of Moses and Abraham were said to have descended from Semitic peoples in the Middle East.
Chapter Three: Prisoner of War --
Er Verblutete = Ear Ver-blue-tay
Jan = Yon
Bar Mitzvah = the Jewish rite of passage when a boy becomes a man, usually at the age of 12 or 13
Chapter Four: The Noose Tightens
Modrzejowska = Mo-dray-joev-ska
Reichsmarks = German money
Katowice = Cat-o-vice
Stara Sosnowiec Quarter = a ghetto
Zionist = a Jew in favor of establishing a Jewish homeland in the traditional land of Israel
Szklarczyk = Sklar-chik
Convalescent home = like a nursing home
Theresienstadt = Te-raisin-stat
Dienst = Deenst
Dabrowa = Da-bro-va
Chapter Five: Mouse Holes
Srodula = Shro-doo-la
Zawiercie = Za-weer-see
Auschwitz = Osh-vitz
SS = At first an elite guard, this group evolved into killing squads that dealt with external (non-German) “problems”
Gestapo = the Nazi secret police
Judenrat = Jew-den-rat
Liquidate = when the Nazis emptied the ghettoes and sent the inhabitants to work camps or killing camps
Juden raus! = Jews out!
Kombinator, Kombinacya = Kom-bin-ach-ya
Nitrostat = a drug used to quickly relieve chest pain associated with a heart condition
Zakopane = Zak-o-pain
Chapter Six: Mouse Trap
Pragmatic = practical
Dekerta = Da-kair-ta
20 Kilometers = 12.4 miles
Szopienice = Zo-pee-a-nees
Chapter One: Mauschwitz
Zyklon B = a cyanide-based gas, originally manufactured as a pesticide. It was so potent that 2,000 people could be murdered in five minutes
Oswiecim = Oz-vee-i-sim
Schnell! = Fast!
Yids = reference to the language of Yiddish, spoken by eastern European Jews
Bielsko = Byel-sko
K’Minyan Tov = K-min-yan tuv
Chai = Ki
Kapo = Kay-po
Czestochowa = Zest-o-cho-va
the Reich = Hitler’s empire, Germany
Chapter Two: Auschwitz (Time Flies)
Appel = A-pel. An inventory of prisoners used to see which could still be useful
Polacks = an ethnic slur against Poles
Birkenau = Birk-e-now. Also known as Auschwitz II
Guten Morgen = Good Morning
Blocksperre = Blok-spear. A lock-down
Union werke = union work. A factory
Bettnack-zieher = bet-nack zy-er
Chapter Three: And Here My Troubles Began
Dachau = Da-how. A concentration camp in Germany
Typhus = an illness marked by severe headache, high fever, delirium, and red rash
Chapter Four: Saved
Wehrmacht patrol = Vehr-macht. Literally, an armed forces patrol.
Cache = cash. A cache is a hidden supply or storage.
Chapter Five: The Second Honeymoon
Garmisch-Partenkirchen = Gar-mish Par-ten-kirch-en
Wurzburg = Verz-berg