Maus: Part Four

By telling his story as both a direct account of the Holocaust and as a personal narrative of a Jewish family in 1980's New York, Art Spiegelman provided an example of how the experience of European Jews during World War II echoed through several generations. Few Jews of my own generation can claim great grandparents as most of them were too old to survive the concentration camps and ghettos of Nazi rule. This erased not just a generation but an entire history from the lives of millions. Unable to trace their lineage back more than one or two generations, post-war Jews were forced to build new identities from what little they had left. For people like Art Spiegelman, what was left was a family reduced to just a handful of people, all of whom bore the scars of genocide. All of Spiegelman's neuroses, all of his sadness and desperation come with the weight of that unfathomable tragedy.

What's strange is that there's something uniquely shocking about the idea of a generation of Jews who don't have the specter of the Holocaust hanging over them. It occurs to me that the children being born today will grow up with little to no direct contact with survivors. All of the scrapping, paranoia and emotional clinging that stayed with the survivors and were passed down to their children will be so faint for 21st century Jews that they will be able to live mostly free of the greatest threat our people ever endured. This is a blessing above all else, but that doesn't mean that something valuable won't be lost as well. The potency of Holocaust stories is due in part to the human faces attached to them. Perhaps that's why Art Spiegelman insisted on including an actual photograph of his father from the end of the war. It may not be as powerful as sitting with the man himself, but at least we readers can come away from Maus with the image of Vladek Spiegelman himself and not just a representation of him as a cartoon rodent.

The last three chapters of And Here My Troubles Began are shocking not just because of the murderous scramble of the last remaining Nazis but also because of the desperation of the camp prisoners. Especially as the German army pulled out of Poland, abandoning camps like Auschwitz, the Jews were all so sick and hungry that few managed to retain their humanity. Vladek explains how every courtesy extended to him in those final days had to be payed for and just how often he had to fend off thieves and cheats among his own people. This is a part of the Holocaust that is rarely taught. Most narratives don't include the cruelty inflicted on Jews by other Jews, only a vague statement about dehumanization.

Still, there are glimmers of kindness throughout even these darkest moments of Vladek's story. He forms a brief but important friendship with a French prisoner that saves both their lives and partners with various other survivors after the last few dozen prisoners are abandoned to find their way to safety on their own. In the end Vladek is still forced to wander back to Poland alone, but it's clear that he wouldn't have even survived his long bout with typhus or the daily tortures under Nazi guard had it not been for the little moments of tenderness and generosity he encountered along the way.