So, I picked up copies of Art Spiegleman's Maus and Maus II. I've been meaning to read both for years and I finally got around to it. It was weird though, because I went to my Local Comic Shop to get a copy of Maus right when the controversy hit and the owner of the place had never heard of it. Barnes and Noble, however, was more than willing to provide me with a copy of the first graphic novel and The Zekleman Holocaust Center was more than happy to sell me one from their souvenir store. From here on in, I'll be referring to both collectively as simply Maus.
On an entertainment level, I was impressed. Spiegleman had my attention for the entire time I was reading it. Dude can seriously tell a story. He also told the story of not just the his father surviving through the Holocaust, but of both his and his father's lives as they were working through the writing of the tale. It was masterfully done. Flashback is definitely a strong suit for Spiegleman.
The art was also well done. I'm not usually a big fan of black and white art in comic books/graphic novels in general, but Maus is not exactly your everyday comic fare. The Holocaust itself was both dark and gritty. The art matches it perfectly. Or maybe that's just me.
When I did my Capstone Paper at Oakland University I wrote about the involvement of the Heer, the German Army, in the Holocaust. Over the course of a semesters worth of research, I saw a lot of pictures of the carnage, all of them in black and white. All of those pictures were in black and white and some still haunt me. Either way though, the art in Maus matches with my impressions of the events themselves.
Speigleman's father definitely went through many things that no human being should ever have to endure. Maus is a testament both to the cruelty and depravity of the Germans and to the strength and stamina of those who survived. Vladek Spiegelman is hard core. I don't know if I could survive what he went through but he did.
I can't imagine what it must have been like for Art Spiegleman to have conducted those interviews or for Vladek to have went through them. Once, when I was really young, I asked my great-uncle why his eye didn't move. It turns out that his eye was made of glass and had been forced upon him by an unfriendly member of the Japanese military while he was fighting in the Pacific. I'll never forget the way everyone present looked at me, or the way my Aunt Maisie, who had been married to him for literal decades at that point said that she had never heard him talk about the war before. It was years before I realized how terrible the memories that I had dredged up were.
Art Spiegleman found a way to milk memories that were just as bad or worse from his father. I don't know what it took to get it out of the old man, but it must've been near impossible just to get him to open up. Whatever it was, or whatever it took, Art Spiegleman did it. I've got a lot of respect for that because I know it wasn't easy. What Vladek went through reliving all of that was probably even worse, so props to both of them for getting through what they had to get through. The University of Michigan has a program for people to testify to what they lived through and saw during the Holocaust as well.
Maus is a truly realistic look at what happened during the Holocaust. Vladek Spiegleman was a man who did whatever he could do to get through the Holocaust. It didn't matter what it was. It didn't matter what the rules said. He was going to make it if it was at all possible and he was determined not to die trying. I've got more respect for Vladek Spiegleman than probably any other purely human being in history but what he did was frequently against the rules. Granted, they were rules made by the Nazis, but any one of the violations that saved his life could have killed him. That's courage right there, folks and he had it in spades.
I'm glad something like Maus came along. It's important to show the world what happened, how it happened and what it took to survive the Holocaust. I've also reviewed Marvel's X-Men: Magneto: Testament. Of course, I'm aware that many people have also seen Schindler's List. I know I've seen it many times. And, while Schindler's List may be the one exception of the three to what I'm about to say, these works should not be in classrooms to students who do not already have an education in the Holocaust.
That's not to say that Maus does not have literary value, because it has immense literary value. A lot of other books do too, and most of them aren't about the Holocaust. I've heard people talk about/ seen people write about the importance of Maus and its position as the only way to truly understand the emotional impact of the Holocaust on its victims. With respect, those people need to do more reading. There are many books available that have been written by Holocaust victims, not the least of which is Primo Levi's Survival In Auschwitz.
And no, I'm not saying we should ban Maus. I own copies of both books, and I've actually purchased both for my oldest daughter, Riley. The important here being that when I bought her Maus, I also bought her books about the Holocaust in general and Terezin and Ravensbruck. I made sure she had the education to go along with the entertainment because I don't want her to think that the Holocaust is just some bullshit from a fucking comic book.
Students in North America and Europe have both been polled and it has been found that large percentages of young people believe that the Holocaust is either a myth or has been exaggerated. My own niece once asked me why people believe that it happened. I've had conversations with people who believe this way. And, while I will go to my death (hopefully many years from now) confident in my belief that this is the opposite of what Art Spiegleman intended, I believe that Maus, Testament, and other, similar works are a large part of the reason why.
Listen folks, everyone knows that comic books are not factually true. Yes, even those of us who read them for pleasure acknowledge the fact that fiction is fiction. That is precisely why choosing to teach history using graphic novels is the wrong thing to do. If the lessons of the Holocaust are forgotten teaching Maus in classrooms may well be one of the reasons that it does so. I get the fact that it won't be the only reason. Neo-nazis and other Anti-Semites have their own agenda and love using Holocaust denial as a possible reason to massacre the Jews in Israel now and I get that, but there's no reason to help the enemy.
For the record though, my objection has nothing to do with Southern people and their problem with mouse tiddies. That I don't have a problem with.
Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Celebrated Survivors
Maus I, Maus II and a couple of works of Holocaust history are available at the links below. If you click the links and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage of your purchase at no additional cost to you.
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