Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History

[cornerofmadness]

Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have put this off for so long because there is only so much heart break I can take but now I'm furious. The flimsiest of reasons to ban this book (as if it hides their anti-semitism) had me seeking after it (probably from every library I can to make a point). The story is every bit as hard as you might expect it to be, being a story of the Jews in Nazi-era Poland.

Vladek Spielgeman is the survivor from Auschwitz who is relating the story to his son, Art, who is a graphic novelist/illustrator. It is a moving, tragic story within a story, first the historical backdrop of late 30-early 40s Poland but also the story of father and son and how they don't always, or at all, get along. Understandably Vladek is not an easy man to get along with, his trauma showing in hundreds of small ways.

The story (using mice for the Jews and cats for the Nazis and pigs for the christian Polish folk) starts when Vladek is young, building himself a future and even frankly discussing the two women he was with, one of whom he married and later became Art's mother. It's a story of their extended family and of Richlieu, Art's brother and parents' first child. We bear witness to the slow decline in how the Jews were treated, how and why more alarms weren't sounded and how hard it is to flee these troubled times. By the time things were visibly so awful it was too late.

Not only did Vladek, Anja (his wife) and the rest of the family face persecution, there is the breaking of the family as first the elderly were targeted, then the sick and so on. You feel the fear of parents trying to send away their children hopefully to safety. The various city-interment camps that came before Auschwitz, the hiding, the starvation, the wondering who could you trust.

Each chapter is framed with Vladek and Art frictioning along now that Vladek is an old sick man. There are deep scars on both men. The art still manages to be heart rending even if these art anthropomorphized mice.

This volume ends with Vladek and Anja being separated (as all men and women were) when a betrayal sends them to Auschwitz.

This book should not be banned anywhere. Is it hard and ugly? Of course it is. History IS. We can't keep pretending things didn't happen as they did. We can't learn from history if we hide it. Nothing is hidden in this and the vulnerability of Vladek and Art both are the heart of this story.



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