The Legacy of Vladek

What I read: I have just finished reading the sequel to Maus which is called Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began.  Chapter 4 is called "Saved" and in it Vladek finally survives the war.  First though, he gets sent to a lake with the other prisoners and it seems like they are all about to get shot.  Luckily the German officers decide to abandon the prisoners and leave them alone.  

Vladek and his friend Shivek run to a barn to hide.  They get found by the Americas, who are drawn as dogs, and are saved by them.  They both start working for the Americans and are treated with respect.  They are basically working as helpers to the American soldiers.

The last chapter of the series is called "The Second Honeymoon."  In this chapter Vladek old again and really weak.  He needs oxygen to help him breathe.  

Vladek tells Art about how after the war ended, he went to Sweden and worked as a salesman there. The Swedish people are drawn as reindeer.  He really likes living in Sweden and would have stayed there.  Later on, we find out that Vladek gets diabetes.  While in Sweden, Vladek finds out that Anja also survived the war and is still in Poland.  He returns to get her and they reunite on the last page of the book.  This is a contrast to seeing their gravestones together, which is that last picture in the book.

What I thought about: I was really struck when Vladek calls his son Art "Richieu" right before he dies.  This shows that Vladek is always sort of living in the past and inside of all the terrible experiences that he went through.  It's right one the last page of the book and can be seen above.  It's pretty sad to think about how Vladek had such a hard life and even right before he dies, he's still struggling with that.  I wonder if all parents who have kids who die feel this way.

I also thought about all of the various groups that were targeted by the Nazis during the Holocaust.  Toward the end of the book, Vladek talks about how Anja went to see a fortune teller to find out about her family's fate during the war.  

The fortune teller is a Romani and she is drawn as a moth.  This is another person who survived the Holocaust. 

There were also gay people who were targeted by the Nazis and they ended up in concentration and death camps, too.  Many gay men and lesbians were also killed.  Gay men were identified with a pink triangle on their clothes and lesbians had to wear a black triangle. 

What I conclude: I'm so glad that I read this book.  I feel like I learned more about the Holocaust and about the ghettos before that even though I already knew quite a lot about this topic.  I feel like this is a much more personal way to learn about this topic instead of reading facts and statistics.  Vladek's story is real and it feels so emotional to read about what he went through.

I was also interested to read about Art and what it was like for him to be raised by two parents who survived the Holocaust.  It seems like that wasn't easy either.  Today Art and his wife Francoise have been together for a long time and they have two adult children. Those children, Vladek's grandchildren, never got to meet Vladek and Anja.  That seems sad, but they do have an amazing legacy that they can read about in their father's book.

In all, I would really recommend this book for people who like graphic novels and history.  It's a wonderful read and totally worth reading.

The Survivor's Tale Continues

What I read: I have started reading the next book of Maus called Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began.  In the beginning of the book, Art is struggling to draw his wife Francoise.  He can't decide if she should be a mouse too, because she converted to be Jewish in order to marry Art, but she is originally from France.  Mala leaves Vladek which causes a crisis in Vladek's life.  He expects Art and Francoise to help take care of him for the rest of the summer.  Also in the first few chapters of this book, Art visits his psychiatrist, who is also a survivor of the Holocaust.  In these scenes, Art and everyone else are wearing animal masks.

Vladek finally tells Art about his first day at Auschwitz.  Vladek explains how he thought that he was going to immediately die in the gas chambers.  In reality, he took a shower in freezing cold water.  Soon after, Vladek gets an identification number tattooed on his arm.  This is the same number that we saw on his arm in the first book.  Vladek is number 175113.  Vladek also tells Art about an experience he had when he was about to give up all hope.  He says that a Polish priest told him that his number means good luck. The priest tells him, "Your number starts with 17.  In Hebrew that's 'K'minyan Tov.' Seventeen is a very good omen... It ends with 13, the age a Jewish boy becomes a man... and look!  Added together it totals 18.  That's 'chai,' the Hebrew number of life."

Vladek tells Art all about living in the bunkers at Auschwitz.  The Kapo would make them get out of their bunkers to do a lot of exercise in the middle of the night.  Whoever didn't move quickly would be beat with a club.  They were also starving and very weak. The one thing that helps Vladek is his knowledge of languages. One day the Kapo asks is anyone speaks Polish and English. Although neither was Vladek's first language, he spoke both.  This allowed him to teach the Kapo English and get a more favorable position with the Kapo.  He also sometimes had access to extra food and clothes. 

Approximately how happy Vladek felt when he got extra food

In the last chapter that I read Valdek and the other prisoners of Auschwitz are forced to leave the camp.  This is because the Germans knew that the Russians were coming and they had to flee. They burned all their tanks, guns, and everything.  Vladek got pushed into a train meant for cattle with a ton of other people. Most of them died on the train but Vladek survived by eating melted snow.  He ended up in another camp that had even worse conditions than Auschwitz.  There Vladek got typhus (the disease that killed Anne Frank) and almost died.  But once again, he was lucky to survive.

What I thought about: At the beginning of the second chapter, Art shows himself drawing his book on top of a pile of dead bodies.  It's a really creepy image. In this image it shows how Art feels that he's benefiting off the deaths of other people.  This is because his first book of Maus had already come out and sold millions of copies.  He became rich and famous because of his comic about the Holocaust.

In the same chapter there are a few pictures of people being gased and burned.  These images are really graphic and very scary to look at.  Although they are shown as mice, it's really clear that Art is showing actual people's deaths.  When I look at their mouths tuned up, they look really different from all the other pictures of mice in the book.  It seems like they are shown this way because this is the mice at a vulnerable point in their lives.

Another thing I thought about was how in parts of these chapters, Art hows himself and others wearing animal masks.  This is different from the Holocaust scenes where people are jsut shown as animals.  I thought a lot about what this maybe means.  It seems like Art is wearing a mouse mask because he knows he's Jewish but he doesn't feel Jewish enough because he didn't have to go through the same experiences his parents did.  So maybe he feels like he doesn't really deserve the label of "Jewish" like his parents earned it. 

Art with his mask on

What I conclude: As I read I keep on thinking about the horrors of the Holocaust.  I keep asking myself if this book would be stronger if the pictures were of people instead of animals.  I think it would actually be weaker.  There's something about showing everyone as an animal that makes it more bearable, but then easier to see the horrors instead of just feeling like we've seen this all before.  Sometimes people get so used to seeing horrrible pictures, like pictures of the Holocaust, and they stop reacting to them.  With the mice and other animals in this book, it still looks like something new that we have never seen before, so it's really strong.

Obviously Vladek will survive at the end of the book.  So will Anja. We know this because they are Art's parents and Art was born after the Holocaust.  However, it's hard to image how they will survive the incredibly difficult situations they have to deal with. It's really hard to think about how Anja will end up killing herself 23 years after the Holocaust ends.

A photo of Art and his mother Anja

Smuggled and Caught

What I read: The first chapter I read for this blog was about how Vladek, Anja, and Anja's whole family get sent into the ghetto. There, life is more difficult than it was before.  For example, Jews accused of stealing are hung in public for everyone to see.  It's horrifying.

Vladek and Anja decide to build secret bunkers for hiding in the ghetto and try not to get deported. They stay there for a while but the conditions are pretty rough.  Once the ghetto is completely empty, they go to a polish town pretending to be "Polish pigs" (in other words, not Jewish).  It works for a while but finally they decide they need to try to escape to Hungary.  When they try to escape, the smugglers call the Gestapo and Vladek and Anja get caught.  They get sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.

There was one more terrifying event that happens in this book before Valdek and Anja get sent to Auschwitz.  Their first son Richieu dies in a horrible way.  Anja's sister Tosha poisons Richieu, her own children, and herself. They are about to get caught by the Gestapo and sent away to a camp.  Tosha knows that they will all die there.  So instead of letting the Nazis control their deaths, she kills them all and herself.  When Valdek talks about this, its clear how much he loved his first son. 

Here the story switches to Vladek as an old man talking his adult son Art.  Vladek finds a comic that Art had made before called "Prisoner on the Hell Planet."  It's all about the death of Anja, Art's mother.  She slit her wrists and committed suicide.  Art was about 20 years old when this happened.  Art had to deal with this without getting a lot of support from Vladek.   This event was obviously really difficult for both of them


What I thought about: As I read the last chapters of Maus I I was thinking about different things that were related to the Holocaust.  One of these thoughts was the fact that the comic "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" has different images than Maus does.  In Maus the characters are portrayed as animals.  In "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" the characters are portrayed as humans.  The style of drawing is also very different.  Here is an example:

As you can see, these are people and not mice.  Also the whole work looks different.

Another thing that I thought about is how drawings can be stronger than words.  I especially thought about this when Vladek is more worried about Anja than himself when they are walking through the Polish streets pretending not to be Jewish.  Both Vladek and Anja are wearing pig masks in the drawing, but Anja's tail is showing. Vladek explains how Anja looks more stereotypically Jewish than he does.  He worries that someone might see Anja and figure out that she is Jewish from the way she looks.  But that worry is really shown in the drawing where she can't hide as well as he can.

The last thing I thought about was the movie Chicken Run.  I love that movie.  When I was a little girl I was really scared of it because I knew that it was actually about the Holocaust.  All of the images below are from the movie, but they look like actual pictures of Auschwitz.  The first shows the chicken coups from far away.  The second image is inside the bunks.  This picture looks a lot like pictures of prisoners in concentration camps.  The third shows chickens trying to escape.  The last picture is of the ovens that cook the chicken into pies, and it reminds me of the gas chambers and crematoriums.

What I conclude:  Now that I finished Maus I, it's clear to me that I will continue on to the second book.  I loved reading the first book and can't wait to start reading the second one.  The tale of how Vladek survives Auschwitz is something that I can't wait to find out about.  I also want to know more about Art and his relationship with his father.  I think I might find out more about his life at home with his wife too and that seems interesting.