Now that I've finished MAUS, my perspective on World War II has changed. I've learned about WWII in past classes and I've read other accounts of the Holocaust by other survivors. However, this novel has given me a new way to look at it all. While books like Night, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Number the Stars give vivid descriptions of how Jews were treated in the 1930's and 40's, MAUS takes the cake in mental images. The illustrations, although not drawn by an actual survivor, reflect deeply on the story that Vladek Spiegelman tells his cartoonist son. The drawings gave me a new insight as to how brutal the situation was in Poland and in Auschwitz. Trickery, violence, and death are all shown in the graphical nature of this novel, through both direct representations and symbolism. This style of writing and illustrating has helped me conjure a better mental image than other WWII/Holocaust books have. I now understand just how terrifying the Nazis were, and the horrors that awaited millions of Jews.
A memorable part of MAUS was the climax of the entire first book. Vladek and Anja make a deal with smugglers to help them escape Poland and move to Hungary. However, the smugglers end up betraying them and handing them over to the Gestapo. The story goes like this:
"All of us together started on our journey...We traveled less than an hour 'till we came to Bielsko-Biala. Here I used to have my factory, and here the smugglers disappeared.
It was a big commotion...Gestapo came on every side. In Katowice, it was only to THEM the smugglers phoned."
[A Nazi screams "HERE THEY ARE!" while ripping off Vladek's pig mask. Vladek and Anja look horrified.]
This passage is worth remembering because this is the turning point of Vladek's tale. Before this point, he and his wife only tried to escape the Nazi's influence. Now, they will face the brutal treatment handed out at Auschwitz concentration camp (continued in Book 2).
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