David's World

February 4, 2005

Maus - A Survivor's Tale: the Third Reich in a Comic

An expression of the tragic with comical means: that's a predominantly Jewish virtue, and probably only a Jew could legimately use the light-weight means of a cartoon to depict the horror of the Holocaust.

I finished reading Art Spiegelman's MAUS the other day, a Pulitzer-Prize winning series of cartoon books, depicting in black&white drawings how his father survived the Third Reich.

Vladek, a wealthy and smart Jewish Pole, has just started a family when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1938 and slowly began to destroy his life. He and his wife end up in concentration camps. Thanks to their wit, contacts and with (and maybe despite their) humanity towards their fellow Poles, they survived what was the worst ordeal in history. Their little boy did not. (His first wife Anna commited suicide in the 60's - survivor's guilt.)

Told with an autobiographic frame, where Vladek, as an ailing, sometimes difficult senior in New York, tells his life story to his son Art(ie), Spiegelman's cartoon has a lot of authenticity.
The Polish Jews are mice, the nazis become cats, and after a bit of thinking, Artie finds an allegory for the French, too: frogs. Of course!

We'd better be glad we're not citizens of this animal kingdom - I for my part wouldn't know which animal to choose. Maus is probably already well-known among comic enthusiasts, yet it's a time-less and very worthwhile read.

Art Spiegelman, The complete MAUS
(European / UK version, US Version)
Highly recommended.