Maus is the incredible story of Vladek Spiegelman and his family, who as Polish Jews managed to survive the Holocaust. Incredible luck, right decisions and a cool mind helped Vladek and his family trough the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland and later also Auschwitz. But after the war, the horror is not yet over. With an amazing eye for detail, graphic novelist Art Spiegelman comes to terms with his family’s history by portraying them – and by extension the entire Jewish people - as mice haunted by cats – the Nazis. The effect of this allegory is tremendous.

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Having grown up in a country that was, like Poland, occupied by Nazi-Germany, I am since a considerably young age familiar with stories of the Holocaust and the Second World War in general. With fellow scouts I annually went to put down a wreath at Remembrance Day. Year after year I sat through dull history courses in which ‘the war’ always came back. We visited concentration camps. I read Anne Frank’s diary. I was - and with me many of my fellows – ‘bored out by the war’, however blasphemous that may sound.

For this reason it was not strange that I started reading Maus –first published in 1973 – in a quite sceptical way. A comic book? On the Holocaust? How ridiculous! Soon I learned that this was not just another comic, but an early graphic novel, a genre not to be underestimated. Once drawn into the story, I just couldn’t stop reading and got smashed into that brutal reality that 1939-1945 Europe was.

However, Maus does not only deal with the horrors of the Second World War: it also shows the traumas and scars the survivors have gotten and with which they need to learn to live. The feelings of guilt of having survived whereas others found their death in concentration camps or through numerous other inhuman ways, are almost impossible to swallow. What is more, Maus tells the difficulties children born to Holocaust survivors have, offspring of traumatized parents whose character is – at least in the case of Vladek Spiegelman – tremendously affected by the things he lived through. Naturally this causes the father-son relationship to be all but smooth and easy.

Despite the heavy stuff and traumas the book is dealing with, it remains readable. Don’t expect a comedy or satire, but a truly lived-through and honest personal account of the events that shocked the first half of the twentieth century. Personally this book impressed me much more than all the lectures I had on the War, all the books I read about it, the movies I saw on the topic. Is it because of the visual aspects? Of course it is very original and so effective to not only graphically portray the story –and make it visual - but also to make a kind of allegory out of it. Cats haunting mice. That’s what it basically comes down to. I was swept off my feet by the realness of this book. It proves that allegories are all but old-fashioned. For the first time in years the subject of the Second World War really touched me again: my indifference slowly faded while reading this book. Working with animals makes it all in some paradoxical way ‘more human’ - the scenes of screaming and grieving mice really made me cold – as we are all touched by furry little animals – and than thinking that real people did this to one another is just too much.

Every year in my country Liberation Day is full of festivities which have nothing really to do anymore with the events of 65 years ago, but thought is given to the meaning of ‘Freedom’. For the first time in years I will however now really will pay attention to the all too easily forgotten events of ‘39-‘45. |