Maus, A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman.
Title: Maus, A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History.
Author: Art Spiegelman.
Genre: Non-fiction, WWII, war, graphic novel, memoir, biography.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: Serialized 1980-1986 (this collection 1986).
Summary: The story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying history, and History itself. Moving back and forth from Poland to Rego Park, New York, the book tells two powerful stories: The first is Spiegelman's father's account of how he and his wife survived Hitler's Europe, a harrowing tale filled with countless brushes with death, improbable escapes, and the terror of confinement and betrayal. The second is the author's tortured relationship with his aging father as they try to lead a normal life of minor arguments and passing visits against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At all levels, this is the ultimate survivor's tale-and that, too, of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.
My rating: 8.5/10.
My review:
♥ "Why do you cry, Artie? Hold better on the wood."
"I-I fell, and my friends skated away w-without me."
He stopped sawing.
"Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!"
♥ 'I knew where the one I shot should be laying. His name was Jan, and I knew that I killed him. And I said to myself: "Well, at least I did something."'
♥ "You mean your 'Parshas Truma' dream actually came true?"
"Yes-this is for me a very important date. I checked later on a calendar. It was this Parsha on the week I got married to Anja. And this was the Parsha in 1948, after the war, on the week you were born! And so it came out to be this Parsha you sang on the Saturday of your Bar Mitzvah! The next morning each from us got a Red Cross package, and they loaded us on a train to Poland."
♥ "And I don't need to tell you how big the joy was in our house. Even though everything was very tough-and it was really very tough-we were happy only to be together."
♥ 'And then it came again something new from the Germans. We got a notice.
"All Jews over 70 years old will be transfered to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia on May 10, 1942, a community better prepared to take care of the elderly than ours in Sosnowiec..."
"It doesn't look too bad!"
"Like a convalescent home."
'Anja's grandparents had about 90 years.'
"We've been together-a family-for 70 years. We don't want to break apart now!"
"Don't worry. We won't let them take you."
'We didn't yet know of Auschwitz-of the ovens-but we were anyway afraid.'
♥ 'Several times came the Jewish Police to our house...'
'Jewish police?'
'Some Jews thought in this way: if they gave to the Germans a few Jews, they could save the rest. And at least they could save themselves.'
♥ "He had still a little "protection" from the Gemeinde, so they took only him away-not his wife. He wrote that we had to give over the grandparents. Even if they took only him away now, next they would grab him wife, and then the rest of the family."
"So, what happened?"
"What happened? We had to deliver them! They thought it was to Theresienstadt they were going. But they went right away to Auschwitz, to the gas."
"When did you first hear about Auschwitz?"
"Right away we heard... Even from there-from that other world--people came back and told us. But we didn't believe. Then this same news came more and more, so we believed. And later on, we saw... even worse!"
♥
♥ 'So Persis arranged, and he came again to Srodula. It went with him Wolfe, Tosha and Bibi Lolek's little sister, Lonia and our boy, Richieu. We watched until they disappeared from our eyes... It was the last time we saw them; but that we couldn't know. When things came worse in our ghetto we said always: "Thank God the kids are with Persis, safe." That spring, on one day, the Germans took from Srodula to Auschwitz over 1,000 people. Most they took were kids-some only 2 or 3 years. Some kids were screaming and screaming. They couldn't stop. So the Germans swinged them by the legs against a wall, and they never anymore screamed. In this way the Germans treated the little ones what still had survived a little. This I didn't see with my own eyes, but somebody the next day told me. And I said, "Thank God with Persis our children are safe!'
'So what happened to Richieu?'
'Ach! Our beautiful boy. We only found out much later. A few months after we sent Richieu to Zawiercie, the Germans decided they would finish out that ghetto.'
"More gunshots! What's going on?"
"It's horrible, Tosha! All the Gestapo in the ghetto have been replaced by others from Opole. They just shot Persis and the rest of the Jewish Council!"
"What?"
"They're evacuating Zawiercie. We're all supposed to go to the square with all our baggage right away. They're sending all of us out-to Auschwitz!"
"Oh my God. No. I won't go to their gas chambers! And my children won't go to their gas chambers. Bibi! Lonia! Richieu! Come here quickly!"
'Always Tosha carried around her neck some poison... She killed not only herself, but also the 3 children. I'm telling you, it was a tragedy among tragedies. He was such a happy, beautiful boy!'
♥ 'We were maybe 200 people together waiting... Each Wednesday went vans to Auschwitz. When we were caught, it was then maybe a Thursday.'
"Look, Anja! That's my cousin, Jakov Spiegelman, in the courtyard. Hey! Jakov! Jakov-help us!"
"Vladek?! There's nothing I can do!"
'I made signs to show I could pay.'
"Okay. Don't worry! Haskel will come help you!"
'Haskel Spiegelman was another cousin.'
'Wouldn't they have helped you even if you couldn't pay? I mean, you were from the same family..."
'Hah! You don't understand... At that time it wasn't anymore families. It was everybody to take care for himself!'
♥ "Haskel took from me father-in-law's jewels. But, finally, he didn't help them. On Wednesday the vans came. Anja and I saw her father at the window. He was tearing his hair and crying. He was a millionaire, but even this didn't save his life."
♥ 'And he did get put into one of the next transports to Auschwitz. Anja became completely hysterical.'
"The whole family is gone! Grandma and grandpa! Poppa! Momma! Tosha! Bibi! My Richieu!! Now they'll take Lolek!"
'It was also around this time that we heard first the bad news from Zawiercie-about Tosha and Richieu.'
"Oh God. Let me die too!"
"Come, Anja, get up!"
"Why are you pulling me, Vladek? Let me alone! I don't want to live!"
"No, darling! To die, it's easy... But you have to struggle for life! Until the last moment we must struggle together! I need you!"
'And you'll see that together we'll survive. This always I told her.'
♥ "So, all of us together started on our journey... We traveled less than an hour 'til 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 smuggler phoned. They marched us through the city of Bielsko. We passed by the factory what once I owned... We passed the market where always we bought to eat, and passed even the street where we used to live, and we came 'til the prison, and there they put us."
♥ "A few days later the trucks came. They pushed in maybe 100 of us. One more time I was together with Anja. I had still things I got by writing this letter. We came to the town of Oswiecim... Before the war I sold textiles here. And we came here to the concentration camp Auschwitz. And we knew that from here we will not come out anymore... We knew the stories-that they will gas us and throw us in the ovens. This was 1944... We knew everything. And here we were."
