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.
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