Maus means a lot.

Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is a personal narrative about his father’s trials as a Jew in Poland during the Second World War.

My father, a writer, has a room that is wall to ceiling books in his house. I have fond memories of spending my Saturdays in his library, reading whatever my stubby little hands could pull off the first shelf. He didn’t own any graphic novels, except for both volumes of Maus.

You see, my father’s father, my grandfather, was the only surviving member of his family to escape.  I think my dad felt a little like Spiegelman in this sense. That was the last time I had read Maus and I haven’t picked it up since, so it was pretty intense to read it some years later and have a better understanding of what happened.

Art does a visceral job at recounting his Father’s time in Poland. As someone who grew up hearing a lot of first, and second hand survivor stories, what’s in his graphic novel is pretty accurate to how they are told. I couldn’t help but notice some parallels between Vladek’s stories and my grandfather’s story. My great grandfather was the owner of a metal working factory in Poland, he bribed and persuaded Nazis to let my grandfather and his brothers go.

Neither of his brothers survived the war. My grandfather’s older brother, a violinist who would be on Polish radio stations before the war, had his hands broken and his violin shattered.

They ended up only having enough money to smuggle one to Britain. My grandfather found out later his brothers died in a death camp. There’s a lot more to the story, but the point of this blog post is to talk about how good a job Art did at reciting his father’s story through a graphic novel.

Maus is hard to read, but I think it’s crucial to read, for anyone interested in not having something like this happen again, to help curb racism, to understand a horrific moment in history.