Vladek In Maus

“Mainly I remember arguing with him… and being told that I couldn’t do anything as well as he could,” Art tells his therapist. “No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz” (Spiegelman, “Maus II” 44). Learning about Vladek in Maus and the experiences that made him who he was, it’s easy to understand the strained relationships that Vladek had with his son and second wife. Maus I and II are infamous graphic books written by Art Spiegelman that draw out the story of Vladek living through the Holocaust. In the book, Vladek tells his stories to his son, explaining not only his life, but of the life of his friends and family, and the life of others living through the Holocaust and World War II. Maus I and

Maus shows the timeline of history through the lense of people actually experiencing it. A major way that history is shown in this book is the pictures and information about the time period. This is first seen when Vladek receives a draft notice and is drafted into the Polish army. After fighting in the trenches, he is taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans (“Maus” 47-49). This part of the book tells the history of the beginning of World War II. Along with World War II, the Holocaust shown through many specific details. For example, explaining the march out of Auschwitz, Vladek states, “It was already night, they gave to each of us a blanket and a little food to carry, and we went out from Auschwitz, maybe the last one" (“Maus II” 81). This is towards the end of the war and less than a month later Auschwitz is liberated by the German troops. Not too many months later and World War II comes to an end along with the suicide of Adolf Hitler. This book showed the events happening from the beginning to end of the war inside the camps. This book accounted for many events of European history through the daily lives in the concentration camps and in hiding, showing the events as the Jews saw

These two histories seem to begin at a parallel before the war, then join together. This is first seen in Maus at the beginning of the story when Vladek accompanies Anja to a sanitarium in Czechoslovakia. Vladek recalled passing a small town on the way that had a Nazi flag flying in the center. He stated that every Jew from the train got very excited and frightened as they passed by (“Maus” 32). This is where the histories first begin to intersect, as the Nazis first begin to invade the towns. After this point, the histories tend to stay together through Vladek and his family experiencing the war. Though, the story tends to diverge as the Spiegelman’s migrate to America after the war (Marcuse, “Reading