Review of Maus: A Survivor's Tale - A Graphic Novel by Art Spiegelman

I do not like reading books that remember the Holocaust, but something seems to always draw me back to reading them anyway.

When I visited New York City in October of 2015, I visited a Jewish friend who happened to be discussing "Maus" by Art Spiegelman with her daughter (on the phone) who was away at college.  I believe her daughter may have had an assignment to do on the books, but I'm not sure about that.

While my friend and her daughter discussed the books, my friend brought the books to me, and after I glanced at them, I knew I wanted to read both volumes.  I have always enjoyed comic books, but I knew that these particular comic books were not like any other I'd ever seen.  (My friend was shocked I didn't know about these books.)

The story is told in comic book form and are graphic novels and shows Art "Artie" Spiegelman interviewing his father.  The reader gets to know Vladek Spiegelman as an old and miserable man who lives in New York, but at the same time the reader travels back in time to the time when Vladek Spiegelman was a handsome and strong young man who married a wealthy and beautiful Jewish woman named Anja.

Vladek and Anja were a happy couple with a young son.  Sadly, that son died in the Holocaust when he was a very small child.  As the reader follows Vladek's story, he or she learns how terrible life in Poland was, but how even more terrible was life in Auschwitz.  Vladek suffered from hunger, brutality, and lice.  He was packed into trains and treated worse than an animal.

The Jews in the book are pictured as mice, the Germans are cats, the Americans are dogs, and the Poles are pigs.

This book was like no other book since it drained my soul  G-d seemed to have disappeared completely.  How could such horrible things happen to anyone?  It seems that G-d deserted the Jews in Poland and the people in the camps completely.  Of all the books I've read about the Holocaust, this one was probably that most upsetting.  It almost haunted me.

It also helped me understand why people in the past saved every little thing, even scraps of bread and paper napkins.  What was and is worthless to people today was "like a treasure" for Vladek Spiegelman since those in the camps had nothing: no food, no paper, no toilet paper, nothing...all was taken away from the people in the ghettos and even more was taken away in the prison camps.  It is amazing that he and his wife survived.  Sadly, Vladek's wife, Anja killed herself in 1968 and her diaries were destroyed after that by her husband.  They would have told more details and more stories, but what Vladek did tell his son is huge.

Arthur Spiegelman did an amazing job and his story deserves more than five stars. I will never forget his books.

My Visit to My Great-Grandfather Adolf Regenstreich's Grave in Ozone Park, Queens, New York 10-16-15

While I was in New York City for the About.com Expert Event annual conference, I decided to take the time to seek out the grave of my great-grandfather (my father Arthur Schneider's grandfather and his mother, my Grandma Fannie's father).

Adolph Regenstreich

Until recently, all I knew about Adolf Regenstreich was that he was the father who came from Romania of my Grandma Fannie Ragin Schneider.

My Grandma Fannie was one of the youngest of 8 children   The names of Adolf's children were Rachel (always called Rae), Theodore (nickname was Teddy), Molly, Dorothy, Clara, David (Dave), Fannie, and Sidney

The oldest sister was named Rae (short for Rachel) and Rae was actually Grandma's half sister since Adolf's first wife, Golde, died when she was very young.  Adolf remarried Esther after Golde died and Esther, like Adolf, died of tuberculosis when she was very young.  I seem to remember Grandma telling me that her older sister Rae and her other older sister Molly did most of the cooking!

When the siblings (with the exception of Teddy) moved to California, they changed and shortened their last name to Ragin. (My uncle Bobby told my husband that Adolf Regenstreich real name had been Abraham Jacob Levine, but to protect his family, he changed his name to Adolf Regenstreich so he could somehow avoid having to serve in the Romanian-Austrian army since men with Jewish sounding names were drafted first.)

Fannie Ragin (Regenstreich)

Rae's grandaughter, Luci Rollins Janssen, connected with me and my father recently.  She found us after searching through ancestory search websites!

Rae Regenstreich Rollins

During a very recent trip to Luci's home, I was shown a photo of my great-grandfather's gravestone and also given a copy of his death certificate.  He died in 1914 in New York City.

So....early on Friday morning, October 16, 2015, I made a call to find out exactly where in the Acacia Cemetery Adolf Regenstreich was buried.

First I was told abruptly, "Call back Monday," but when I told the person that answered the phone that I would not be in NYC Monday, I received a call from Susan (on her day off) who ran the office at Acacia Cemetery.  Susan "bent over backwards" to help me find my great-grandfather by asking someone named Marcia who was answering the office phones to search for my great-grandfather on the microfiche records. Susan then gave me detailed directions over the phone on how exactly to find Adolf in the very huge cemetery which is the largest Jewish cemetery in New York City!

After I talked to Susan, I got on a subway train in mid-town Manhattan and took a hour plus long subway ride to Ozone Park, Queens.  When I got off the train, I met and linked up with my study partner, Dena Leff, from Partners in Torah (Dena lives about 30 minutes from the Acacia Park cemetery), and together we found Yassir 41 where Adolf Regenstreich was burried. Dena explained that that area was a section of the Acacia cemetary that was for a certain synagogue.

We stepped into a huge space and began searching for Adolf's gravestone.  It seemed like a hopeless thing to do, since there were so many graves in that space.

For a moment, I thought I found the gravestone, but realized the grave I found was for someone named Harry Regenstreich, not Adolf.  (Was Harry a relative?  Maybe...I took a photo of Harry's gravestone which said he was 25 years old when he died in 1902.  My father says that Grandma Fannie's oldest brother Teddy stayed in NYC to take care of a relative or brother...was Harry Regenstreich related to that person?)

I just kept searching and searching and walked by gravestone after gravestone.  I was about to give up, but finally, I found Adolf Regenstreich's stone!  It was huge and was in the very center of Yassir 41, on the left and only 13 spots from the center entry!

I shook when I saw his stone and grave.

Jo Ann and Her Study Partner From Parners in Torah Dena Leff at Jo Ann's Great Grandfather's Grave

After taking many, many photos, Dena read some Hebrew prayers outloud and then she told me that I was supposed to talk to my great-grandfather and tell him about his family, so I began to talk and talk and told my great-grandfather about my Grandma Fannie and I told him all about his other children, Grandma's brothers and sisters, who I got to know well when I lived with Grandma in the late 1970s.




This was a very memorable experience, and was made even "more memorable" because Dena was there.  In the approximately 14 years I've studied with Dena and Partners in Torah, Dena and I have only met face to face three times:  In 2007 when she organized a "Spur of the Moment Bar Mitzvah" for my son Joel, in 2014 when my daughter Annabelle and I attended her daughter Shira's wedding, and on Friday, October 16, 2015 when I visited my great-grandfather's gravesite.  Dena and Partners in Torah made that experience so, so meaningful!  And...all three experiences were the best learning experiences ever!

Before we left, Dena instructed me to put a rock on top of my great-grandfather's gravestone to show that he had been visited.