Maus

This is the book that proved comics could carry the Holocaust — the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. It matters if you want history told through one stubborn, miserly, unforgettable voice rather than a textbook, and if you're willing to watch a son interrogate a father he can barely stand. It's for readers of memoir, history, and anyone who has ever inherited a family story they didn't ask for.

1. 1Part 1, Chapter 1: The Sheik

   "If you lock them together in a room with no food..."

   Rego Park, 1958. Young Art falls while skating and his friends abandon him. He comes home crying, and his father Vladek — speaking broken English — delivers a line: "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!" As an adult in 1978, Art visits his father Vladek in Rego Park, Queens, to record his Holocaust experiences for the book Art is preparing. Vladek has remarried Mala since Art's mother Anja died by suicide in 1968.

   The idea

   The book opens with a child's small wound met by a survivor's enormous one.

   Try this: Ask an older relative to tell you one story from before you were born — and record it this time.

2. 2Part 1, Chapter 1: The Sheik

   The courtship Vladek begs Art to cut

   Vladek starts his story in the mid-1930s: courting Anja Zylberberg, marrying into her wealthy family in 1937, moving to Sosnowiec to work as a manufacturer. Then he begs Art not to put any of this in the book — and Art reluctantly agrees. What follows anyway: Anja suffers a breakdown from postpartum depression after their first son Richieu is born, and the couple travels to a sanitarium in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for her recovery.

   The idea

   Vladek begs Art to cut the courtship from the book, but Spiegelman keeps it in despite his father's wishes.

   Try this: Notice which stories your family tells and which it suppresses. Ask why.

3. 3Part 1, Chapter 3: Prisoner of War

   Prisoner of war, then prisoner of a border

   Just before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Vladek is drafted into the Polish army. He is captured at the front and forced to work as a prisoner of war. When he is finally released, he discovers Germany has annexed Sosnowiec — his home is now enemy territory, and he is dumped on the wrong side of the border. So he sneaks across, risking everything, to reunite with his family.

   The idea

   A man released from one captivity must immediately risk his life to walk home.

   Try this: Look up where your family was in 1939 and what the borders around them were doing.

4. 4Part 1, Chapter 2: The Honeymoon

   "Prisoner on the Hell Planet"

   During a visit, Art discovers that a friend of Mala's has sent Vladek an underground comix magazine containing Art's own strip, "Prisoner on the Hell Planet." Vladek finds it and reads it. The strip is drawn in a stark expressionist style with human figures — no mice — and depicts Art's trauma after his mother Anja's suicide in May 1968, three months after his release from a mental hospital. It ends with Art behind bars in a striped uniform, saying: "You murdered me, Mommy, and left me here to take the rap!" Vladek, though the strip brings back painful memories, admits that dealing with the issue this way was for the best.

   The idea

   The embedded comic is drawn in a stark expressionist style with human figures — no mice.

   Try this: Write or draw the one family event nobody talks about. You don't have to show anyone.

5. 5Part 1, Chapter 3: Prisoner of War

   Richieu, sent away to die anyway

   In 1943, the Nazis move the Jews of the Sosnowiec Ghetto to Srodula. Vladek and Anja make the desperate calculation every parent in the ghetto faced: they send their son Richieu to Zawiercie to stay with an aunt, believing he'll be safer there. As more Jews are shipped to Auschwitz, the aunt poisons herself, her children, and Richieu to death — to escape the Gestapo and avoid dying in the gas chambers. He did not survive the war.

   The idea

   A loving aunt decides that a quick death by her own hand is mercy compared to what the Germans have planned.

   Try this: Say the names of family members who died young. Out loud, once.

6. 6Part 1, Chapter 4: The Noose Tightens

   Bunkers, barbed wire, a ghetto inside the ghetto

   In Srodula, Jews build bunkers to hide from the Germans. Vladek's bunker is discovered, and he is placed into a "ghetto inside the ghetto" surrounded by barbed wire. The remnants of Vladek and Anja's family are taken away. Eventually Srodula is cleared of its Jews entirely — except for a group Vladek hides with in another bunker. When the Germans finally depart, the group splits up and leaves the ghetto.

   The idea

   Survival here is construction work: digging, concealing, rebuilding after discovery.

   Try this: When someone's habits annoy you, ask what world taught them those habits.

7. 7Part 1, Chapter 5: Mouse Holes

   Disguised as a Pole, betrayed on the train to Hungary

   In Sosnowiec, Vladek and Anja move from one hiding place to the next, making contact with other Jews in hiding. Vladek disguises himself as an ethnic Pole and hunts for provisions. The couple arranges with smugglers to escape to Hungary. It's a trick. The Gestapo arrests them on the train as Hungary is invaded and takes them to Auschwitz, where they are separated: Vladek to the men's camp, Anja to the women's.

   The idea

   Vladek passing as a Pole is survival depending on costume.

   Try this: Think of a time you passed as something you weren't to stay safe. What did it cost?

8. 8Part 1, Chapter 6: Mouse Trap

   "Murderer" — the diaries Vladek burned

   Art asks about Anja's diaries — her account of her Holocaust experiences, the only record of what happened to her after her separation from Vladek at Auschwitz. Anja had wanted Art to read them. Vladek comes to admit that after she killed herself in 1968, he burned them. Art is enraged and calls his father a "murderer."

   The idea

   Vladek couldn't bear to keep the pages; Art can't bear that they're gone.

   Try this: If someone in your family keeps letters or diaries, ask now who will keep them after.

9. 9Part 2, Chapter 1: Mauschwitz

   Blocked: the psychiatrist's chair in 1986

   The story jumps to 1986, after the first six chapters of Maus have been published in a collected edition. Art is overwhelmed by the book's unexpected attention and finds himself "totally blocked." He talks with his psychiatrist Paul Pavel, a Czech Holocaust survivor, who suggests that since those who perished in the camps can never tell their stories, "maybe it's better not to have any more stories." Art replies with a quote from Samuel Beckett — "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness" — then catches himself: "on the other hand, he said it."

   The idea

   Art replies with a quote from Samuel Beckett, then catches himself: "on the other hand, he said it."

   Try this: When stuck on something hard to say, write the argument for not saying it first.

10. 10Part 2, Chapter 2: Auschwitz (Time Flies)

    Auschwitz: starvation, selektionen, smuggled messages

    Vladek tells of his hardship in Auschwitz — starvation and abuse, and his own resourcefulness, trading skills and connections keeping him one step ahead of death. He avoids the selektionen, the process by which prisoners were selected for further labor or execution. Despite the danger, Anja and Vladek exchange occasional messages across the camp's divide — the men's side and the women's side.

    The idea

    Vladek's resourcefulness keeps him one step ahead of death in Auschwitz.

    Try this: Next time you bargain over something small, remember where those skills once kept a man alive.

11. 11Part 2, Chapter 3: ...And Here My Troubles Began...

    The marches: Gross-Rosen, Dachau, typhus

    As the German front is pushed back, the prisoners are marched from Auschwitz in occupied Poland to Gross-Rosen within the Reich, and then to Dachau. The hardships only increase — the camps shrink, the marches lengthen, the food disappears. In Dachau, Vladek catches typhus. The title of the chapter is the sentence Vladek uses to mark the moment his survival got harder after Auschwitz.

    The idea

    The troubles didn't end with the most famous camp; they multiplied as the Reich collapsed around its prisoners.

    Try this: Read one account of the death marches this week — they're the part of the story most often skipped.

12. 12Part 2, Chapter 4: Saved

    "I'm tired from talking, Richieu"

    The war ends, the camp survivors are freed, and Vladek and Anja reunite. The book closes with Vladek turning over in his bed as he finishes his story, telling Art: "I'm tired from talking, Richieu, and it's enough stories for now" — calling his living son by the name of his dead first-born. The final image is of Vladek and Anja's tombstone, with Vladek's death date: he died in 1982, before the book was completed.

    The idea

    At the finish line, Vladek calls his living son by the name of his dead first-born.

    Try this: Finish the conversation with your oldest relative while you can. Record the last story.

13. 13Throughout — Part 1, Chapter 1 onward

    Mice, cats, pigs: the mask that tells the truth

    The book uses a consistent animal metaphor: Jews are drawn as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, the French as frogs, and Swedes as reindeer. Art struggles over how to depict his French wife Françoise, who converted to Judaism to please Vladek — a frog, a mouse, something else? He draws her as a mouse. The epigraph of the first volume is a quote from Adolf Hitler: "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human." The opening of the second volume quotes a Nazi propaganda paper decrying Mickey Mouse as "the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom" as evidence of "Jewish brutalization of the people."

    The idea

    The animal metaphor is a mask, a device in ink.

    Try this: Pick a metaphor someone uses about a group and ask who first drew it, and why.

Anyone who thinks comics can't carry weight, and anyone who has ever loved a parent they couldn't stand. Readers of Holocaust memoirs who want the survivor's story and the cost of telling it — guilt, burned diaries, a father calling you by your dead brother's name — in one book.

FAQ