Maus blog entry

In reading the book Maus I found it difficult to find one part of area of the book that was especially moving because I felt the book and story as a whole was very moving. To read about what Art Spiegelman’s father had to go through to make it through the Holocaust and World War II was incredible. Not only did he get captured and have to live through the prison camps and death camps, but he got caught multiple times. What Speigelman’s father, Vladek, went through was truly incredible. As a story of survival, Maus also represents the best and worst of humanity. It is about people doing the best to survive and of others willing to risk their lives to help others survive and live on. This story is filled with many touching and emotional moments.
One of the most moving parts of Maus, at least in my opinion is, is that part where Vladek and his family were caught while hiding out in an attic. While they were waiting for the Nazis to ship them to Auschwitz, Vladek and his family devised a way to escape by paying for their cousin to help them. They were to act like they were working for Vladek’s cousin. Two by two members of Vladek’s family were able to walk out of the prison where they were being held. Unfortunately, Vladek’s father in law, who was very wealthy, was unable to escape. Vladek’s cousin took his payment but did not help him escape. In the end Vladek and his wife watched as his father in law was shipped off to Auschwitz and never heard from again. It was sad to hear the description and how it ended. “He was a millionaire, but even this didn’t save him his life.”
As I read that passage in the book, I wondered how difficult it must have been for Vladek to look up in the window of the prison on the day the prisoners were all shipped to Auschwitz and to watch his father in law react. They both knew it would be the end and they his father in law would never make it out of Auschwitz alive. It’s just amazing that people can be so cruel and unforgiving and that no one was able to help the author’s grandfather. It must have been very tough for Vladek to watch someone he loved go to die.
As I continued reading Maus, and the story of survival that it included and all the twists and turn that went with it, it sort of reminded me of a movie I once saw called “Life is Beautiful” (or La Vita e bella…it’s an Italian movie). It’s a movie about an Italian Jew who is rounded up and placed in a concentration camp with his wife and young son. The man realizes that he can help his son cope and survive if he makes it to be a game. He convinces his young son to play the game and that in order to win, the young boy must hide and make sure the Nazis do not see him. In the end the father does not survive, but by hiding the young son does and believes he has won the game and is reunited with his mother. It is a touching movie that shows the ways people can survive and how a father would do anything to make his young son survive.
The journey of that movie sort of reminds of the book in the sense that Spiegelman’s father had to do a lot of things to survive. He hid in attics and barns, paid people off, pretended to work for people; anything to survive and make it another day. The movie, “Life Is Beautiful” involved the father of the young boy telling his son to do various things such as hide, or be quiet, in order to help his son survive. The common thread is survivalism. Not everyone survived in each story, as witnessed by the death of the father in law in Maus and the boy’s father in “Life is Beautiful”. Both the movie and the book are also moving and powerful accounts of the Holocaust and what the Jews of Europe had to go through during World War II and how people will do anything to get by when forced to. Both the movie and the book are personal accounts or based on personal experiences and accounts of the Holocaust and the concentration camps.