The graphic novel Maus was written by Art Spiegelman. The novel consists of two novels inside, the first novel My Father Bleeds History, was written in 1986, and the second, And Here My Troubles Began in 1992. The two novels were first combined and published as one novel in 1996. The inspiration behind the novels is to share the story of Vladek Spiegelman, and how he survived the Holocaust in World War 2.
The first novel My Father Bleeds History, the story begins in the years leading up to World War 2 in Sosnowiec, Poland; back when Vladek was just a young man. He meets his wife, Anja Zylberberg who is from a well-off family. They soon marry and Anja’s family helps Vladek start his textile factory. Shortly after, they give birth to their son Richieu. Then, Vladek and Anja go to a sanitarium in Czechoslovakia as she suffers from post-partum depression. Whilst in Czechoslovakia, they witness the Nazism spreading. Anja then recovers and the two return to Poland. Upon their return, Vladek comes back to a vandalized factory.
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With the ongoing World War 2, Vladek becomes a Polish soldier and is taken prisoner by the Germans. He then gets released from the prisoner camp and returns to Poland. Vladek loses his factory and turns to the black market where he does what he can to make a living. Jews are slowly being taken from his town to the camps, including Anja’s grandparents. Vladek and Anja send their son, Richieu, to stay with a relative in another Polish town to stay safe, but eventually, the Jews there are also deported to the camps. Anja’s sister Tosha commits suicide and poisons Richieu and her children to avoid deportation. Vladek and Anja go into hiding on a farm outside Sosnowiec. They pay smugglers to transport them out of Poland into Hungary, but the smugglers turn them over to the Germans.
Vladek gets taken to Auschwitz, and Anja is taken to Birkenau. Vladek uses his skills to save enough rations to negotiate Anja’s transfer to Auschwitz. They spent a year in the camps until the Germans decided to shut down the camps and finish executing the Jews at different camps within Germany.
Vladek ends up in Dachau for a short time before he is transported to the Swiss border with the other prisoners, where they think that they are going to be freed, but the German soldiers intend to execute them. However, they were set free. Vladek and his friend Shivek took refuge in a farmhouse until the American soldiers came to the town. Vladek returned to Sosnowiec and reunited with Anja. They emigrated to Sweden, and then to the United States, where they began a new life and gave birth to their second son, Art.
Throughout the book, it flashes back to the current day where Vladek has remarried and his second wife, Mala, is also a Holocaust survivor, but they constantly bicker over money. At the end of the book, Art is infuriated to learn that Vladek destroyed all of Anja’s diaries from the war. Which he wanted to have as his mother committed suicide in 1968.
In the second And Here My Troubles Began, Art makes the story more about himself. He gives an insight into his somewhat troubled relationship with his father as he records his conversation with his therapist about his father and his feelings towards the Holocaust. Whilst on holiday with his wife Françoise, they receive a phone call from Vladek, who tells them that Mala has left him, and took a lot of money with her.
Mala and Vladek eventually get back together and move to Florida. Art flies to Florida as Vladek’s health takes a turn for the worse and ends up in a hospital in New York. The novel ends with Vladek in hospital recovering as he finishes telling the rest of his story on how he and Anja reunited in Sosnowiec.
The best part of the novel was the storyline. It was very interesting to read a personal story from a Holocaust survivor. The worst part of the novel was how it was written as a graphic novel as I found it difficult to read. I think that overall the novel was a fairly good read. It was an interesting insight into the life of a Holocaust survivor.
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