UCSB Hist 133D: The Holocaust in German History
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/133d [33d]

Prof. Harold Marcuse, UCSB
marcuse@history.ucsb.edu

Introduction about Maus (back to top)

Maus is a story within a story: Art Spiegelman, the son of two survivors of the Holocaust, tells how he interviewed his father Vladek about his father's Holocaust experience, and he also tells the story of the father's persecution and suvival. It is written in a comic book format, with various types of animals representing the various nationalities (and religions: Jews are generally mice, no matter what nationality they are).

Timeline of Events in Maus and Spiegelman's Life (back to top)

• 1906, Oct. 11: Vladek Spiegelman born
• 1912, March 15: Anja Zylberberg born
• 1927: Vladek starts his first service in the Polish army (must train every 4 years)
• 1937, Feb. 14: Vladek and Anja marry
  • 1937, Oct: Vladek and Anja's son Richieu is born in Sosnowiec
• 1939, Aug. 24: Vladek is called to serve in the Polish army
  • Sept. 1: Germany invades Poland
  • Sept. 4: Germans enter Sosniwiec
                 Vladek is arrested as a prisoner of war
  • Sept. 28: Poland surrenders
  • Nov. 5-6: Jews in Poland must wear an armband or yellow star patch
  • Dec. 23: Jewish property in Poland is confiscated
                  Vladek and Anja's father lose their factories
• 1940, Feb.: Vladek is released from the POW camp and sent to Lublin
• 1941, Dec.: All Jews in Sosnowiec are forced to live in the ghetto section
  • Dec. 7: Japan attacks US at Pearl Harbor, US enters World War II
• 1942, May 10-12: "Aktion" (deportation) of 1500 from Sosnowiec, includes Anja's parents
  • June: 2000 more Jews deported from Sosnowiec to Auschwitz
  • Aug. 12: 8000 Jews called to Sosnowiec stadium, then deported to Auschwitz
  • Vladek's parents are also deported and murdered in 1942
• 1943, Spring: all remaining Jews in Sosnowiec are sent to Srodula ghetto
                        Richieu is sent to Zawiercie with his aunt Tosha
  • Aug. 16: most Jews in Srodula are deported to Auschwitz
                  Vladek and Anja are in hiding
  • Aug. 26: Tosha poisons herself, Richieu, her daughter Bibi and her niece Lonia to avoid deportation
• 1944, Jan.: all remaining Jews in Srodula are murdered; Vladek and Anja are still in hiding
  • March: Vladek and Anja are sent to Auschwitz; quarantine til mid-May (II, 68)
  • May-Aug.: Vladek works in Auschwitz tin shop
  • Summer: Vladek sees Anja in Birkenau
  • Aug.-Oct.: Vladek works in Auschwitz shoe shop, then tin/metal working again
  • Sept/Oct: Anja is moved from Birkenau to Auschwitz I
• 1945, Jan.: Vladek is marched to Gross Rosen (Anja, too, then to Ravensbrück)
  • Feb.: Vladek is sent by train to Dachau
  • April: Vladek is evacuated from Dachau
  • Apr. 29: Dachau is liberated
  • May 7: Germany surrenders
  • Summer: Vladek is in a US displaced persons camp in Garmisch-Partenkirchen
  • he goes to Bergen-Belsen, learns that Anja is in Sosnowiec, and goes there to meet her
• 1946: Vladek and Anja move from Poland to Sweden; Vladek starts a business
• 1948, Feb. 15: Art Spiegelman is born in Stockholm
• 1951: Spiegelman family immigrates to US, Art grows up in Queens, New York
• 1965: Art attends the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan
• 1968, ca. March: Art has a brief but intense nervous breakdown & is hospitalized
  • May 21: Anja commits suicide after Art returns home
  • Art leaves Harpur college/SUNY Binghamton (major: art & philo)
• 1970: Art publishes "Prisoner from Hell Planet" (reproduced in Maus)
• 1972: Art publishes "Maus" in Funny Animals (3 page strip; image1, image2)
• 1975: Art meets the woman he will marry, Françoise Mouly (b. 1955)
• 1978: Art Spiegelman starts drawing Maus
• 1979, Aug.: Art and Françoise spend time in the Catskill mountians (NY) with Vladek
• 1980: Art and Françoise start the avant-garde magazine RAW
  • Art begins drawing Maus, which is serialized in RAW
• 1982, Aug. 18: Vladek dies of congestive heart failure
• 1986: first volume of Maus published
• 1987: Art and Françoise's daughter Nadja born
• 1991: second volume of Maus published
• 1992-: Art starts working for the New Yorker, resigns some time after 9/11/01
  • 1992: Art wins a Pulitzer Prize for Maus
  • 1992: son Dashiell born
• 1993-: Françoise works as art editor at the New Yorker
• 2004: Art publishes In the Shadow of No Towers
• 2005: Art begins publishing a comix format memoir, Portrait of the Artist as a Young !@##$%!, which incorporates some of his most significant early underground comix.
  He is also assembling a book about the making of Maus, titled Meta-Maus.
  

Questions to think about while reading (back to top)[updated 1/10/08]
(pdf print version)

1. Note 4 or 5 panels where Vladek's character traits are evident. Do the same for Art.
   Pick five adjectives that describe Vladek's personality. Do the same for Art.
2. What are some of the central characteristics of the Auschwitz that Vladek experienced?
   How does it compare to Dachau? Note which panels convey this information.
3. To what extent is Vladek's story typical of what Jews experienced during the Holocaust?
   In what ways is it not typical?
4. From these books do you get a sense of what caused the Holocaust? Select some panels that indicate how Art or Vladek might explain why the Holocaust happened.
5. Why did Art Spiegelman choose the animals he did to represent different nationalities?
   What stereotypes do they convey?
6. What reasons does Art have for researching and recording his father's story?
   Is this book fiction? If not, explain how mice can talk in the real world.

Links (back to top)

• Quotations and Resources about Maus
  • Chapter summaries, questions, cast of characters and other resources (e.g. on graphic novels), by the Bucks County, Pennsylvania Free Library project (2005)
  • Free Maus "Cliff notes" at GradeSaver.com--character sketches, chapter by chapter summaries, glossary, quizzes, etc.
  • Maus site with study questions, by Eveyln Burg at LaGuardia Community College in 2005, developed to accompany a lecture by Spiegelman.
  1. How do you think Vladek and Anja survive Auschwitz?
  2. Why do you think Anja kills herself?
  3. Explain what you believe will happen to Vladek and Mala’s marriage?
  4. What will happen with Vladek and Art’s relationship? Why?
  5. Why did Spiegelman write this book? Why did he call it Maus?
  6. Why did Spiegelman portray his father’s story as a comic strip?
  7. Maus portrays the Holocaust or a genocide. A genocide is a d eliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group . Do you know of any recent genocides? How are these genocides similar to the Holocaust? How are they different?
  8. What would you have done if you were a Jew living in Poland during the Second World War? What would you have done if you were a Pole? A German? Why?
  9. How did people survive in Poland during the Second World War? How do you think these survivors felt after the war? Why?
  10. In Maus, Art interviews Vladek about the Holocaust. How reliable do you think Vladek’s memory is? Why?
  11. What happens to people who live under a terror regime for a long period of time? Should people adapt to a terror regime? Explain.
  • Chapter by chapter and general study questions, for Cary Henson's Honors Composition Seminar at the University of Wisconsin, Osh Kosh, updated July 2005 Sept. 2007
  • Teacher's Guide and Discussion Questions from Random House publisher
  • 5 study questions by Eric Goldstein at Michigan State, for his 1999 "Focus on American Jewish Culture" course
  • Geri Speace, "Maus," entry in St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture. Jan. 29, 2002, at FindArticles.com.
  • 2 quotations about Maus, one from author Art Spiegelman, published in Oral History Journal in 1987, the other from scholar Stephan Feinstein in Witness and Legacy (1996) (with references). [most links on the page don't work]
• Articles and Lectures about Maus
  • Joshua Brown, "Of Mice and Memory," Oral History Review, Spring 1988. (This seminal examination of vol. 1 is archived here--vol. 2 was published 5 years later.)
  • Michael E. Staub, "The Shoah goes on and on: Remembrance and representation in Art Spiegelman's 'Maus'" Melus, Fall 1995. (12 web pages: 9=notes, 10+11=bib.)
  • "Art Spiegelman's MAUS: Working-Through The Trauma of the Holocaust," by Robert Leventhal (University of Virginia Dept. of German, 1995), part of his hypermedia sourcebook
  • "A Generation Removed? A look at the relationship between Vladek and Art Spiegelman," a somewhat chaotic & incomplete hypertext essay by McGowen at Georgetown University
  • Ian Johnston's 2001 lecture "On Spiegelman's Maus I and II ," for his in Liberal Studies 112 at Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada.
  • Hillary Chute, "Literal Forms: Narrative Structures in Maus," Indy Magazine, Winter 2005. Has detailed interpretations of 8 pages from Maus.
  • Martha Kuhlman, "Marianne Hirsch on Maus," Indy Magazine, Winter 2005
• Interviews and Biographies of Art Spiegelman
  • Wikipedia Art Spiegelman article; and Wikipedia entry for Maus
  • Comiclopedia biography of Spiegelman (with pictures from his other comics)
  • Don Swain, Interview with Art Spiegelman, WiredForBooks.com, 1991 (47 mins.)
  • Chris Goffard, "The Man Behind MAUS: Art Spiegelman in his own Words," The Fish Rap Live! (1992 interview)
  • Harvey Blume, "Art Spiegelman: Lips," Boston Book Review, 1995 interview, The title comes from Spiegelman's controversial 1993 Valentine's Day New Yorker cover showing a Hasidic Jew and a Black Woman.
  • Art Spiegelman, "Those Dirty Little Comics: The introduction to 'Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s'," salon.com, Aug. 19, 1997. (4 web pages). About the history of pornographic comics.
  • Art Spiegelman, "Getting in Touch with My Inner Racist,"Mother Jones, Sept. 1997. About his own racism.
  • Susan Stamberg, Interview with Art Spiegelman, NPR Morning Edition, January 26, 2004. Click on "listen." Includes as "web extra" audio of Vladek describing the death of Art's Aunt Tosha, his brother Richieu, and his cousins.
  • Comic Autobiography: Art Spiegelman, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*!" Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2005- (4 Installments; 2 not available; 3 shows origins of Maus in 1971)
  • Art Director's Club, 2006 illustrated biography
• Pages with more resources (most links are included above already)
  • 1996 bibliography of articles about Maus with ca. 110 items, by Stephen Bergson, librarian at the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto
  • 1999 bibliography on Maus with 51 articles and 13 reviews, by UC Berkeley librarian Gary Handman. Includes Library of Congress catalog call numbers. (Good if you want to head for the library)
  • Michigan State's library bibliographies of Spiegelman's works, original publications of Maus graphics, and some secondary works.
• 2002 linkography on Maus by Holly Schneider. Unfortunately, many links are dead. Includes a brief bibliography.
• Reviews
  • Review of the Maus CD-Rom by Roy Rosenzweig, included in his 1995 article "So, What’s Next for Clio?: CD-ROM and Historians," originally published in The Journal of American History 81, 4 (March 1995): 1621-1640.
  • Short review of Maus by Jill Levine, one of the founders of the UK site TheBookBag, 2007