“As soon as I came back to Czestochowa, she called- once a day, twice a day...every day… we talked” (Maus I 16). This quote, although seemingly insignificant shows how important a family member happened to be for Vladek. For Vladek, Anja became someone who happened to be very important to him. And, when you have something to live for, you are very likely to survive many trials and tribulations. “No! We must stay together, we have made it this far. God will help us!” (Maus II 107). In the Holocaust, families generally had two options. To stick together and die, or separate and die. Anja’s family might have died because so many of them stuck together in one spot. In the Holocaust, smaller numbers could hide more efficiently than large families. Many deaths came from families refusing to budge or split into smaller ‘subgroups’. Families in the Holocaust, although a beacon of inspiration to keep surviving also helped the Nazis find and slaughter helpless, innocent Jews and their families. “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!” (Maus I 61). This shows how even after the Holocaust families were not the same. The parsha, a part of the Hebrew book of the Torah, Art had never heard of. …show more content…
However, if one decides to delve deeper into that chapter of the past through works of art such as Night, Maus I and II, and even Schindler’s List another story unfolds. The story and theme of family. The Jewish families stuck together, protected one another, provided for one another, and even died because and for one another. And yet other families, as seen in Night, the lust to survive rivaled the familial ties that used to be so strong. The story of the Holocaust was a crusade on the Jews and their families. But each Jew possessed a story, a life, and a family. Every Jewish family in Europe happened to have been affected by the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and every family that happened to be in the books, graphic novels, and the movie were real- real families, real stories, real lives, real fear, real betrayals, and real