The Holocaust left a lingering hurt with many of the survivors and perpetrators of the war. As a result, victims often suffered from post-war trauma. Traumatic responses, by first generation Holocaust survivors, were often projected onto their children. Authors Art Spiegelman and Hans-Ulrich Treichel illustrate the above in their memoirs Maus I and II and Lost. Both the parents in the memoirs re-enact their repressed emotions, regarding their experience in the Holocaust, through their children.…
Blair Louis Mrs. Gruehn English 14 November 2017 Night Essay Imagine going through a devastating time in history when people have to witness the death of beloved family members and having to suffer, endure, and survive in disgusting concentration camps. However, victims of the Holocaust had to face this terror in reality.…
The Holocaust was a horrible genocide that killed Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, Slavs, political opponents, the mentally and physically disabled, and others that the Nazis considered a waste of human life (Keko 2). The images of all the piles of dead bodies and all of the saddened faces of those innocent people scar the lives of today’s society. Those pictures are memorable images that have broken the world’s heart. As well as pictures, Elie Wiesel, a survivor from the Holocaust, wrote a very informative book called Night. He tells about his experience in vivid details that makes today’s readers able to understand just how devastating this tragic genocide was.…
“It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.”…
Different Worlds Jews are mice, Nazis are cats, and Poles are pigs. In the setting of “Maus 1: A Survivor’s Tale, My Father Bleeds History”, Art Spiegelman’s characters are far more iconic than they are particular. It is very difficult to distinguish each of the characters through looks alone, and the reader must do so through the dialogue, clothing, and the personality of the different characters. Spiegelman uses iconic characters rather than unique ones so as to separate the parties involved into groups based on their race, and how each was treated by the other parties.…
Introduction The Holocaust is a very important time in history. It can be difficult for one to learn about the horrors that happened during that time. Therefore, many books have been written to help students get a better understanding of this tragic time. Among these hundreds of books are Night, by, Elie Wiesel and Maus, by, Art Spiegelman.…
The books Maus I and Maus II are graphic biographical memoir of the life of Artie Spiegelman father Vladek Spiegelman, and his mother Anja Spiegelman. Artie, who authored the oral history memoir, is a child of the two Polish Jews who survived the mouse and cat game of historical genocide Holocaust, which was a systemic persecution and coordinated murder of millions of Jews and other targeted groups by Nazis regime (Maus II, 45). The father experience of Auschwitz is the other focus of the story (45). Spiegelman’ mother, Anja committed suicide in 1968, whereupon his father, Vladek Spiegelman burned Anja’ diaries. The author uses the work to uncover the view of the Holocaust and how such event changed individuals’ experiences and societal effects…
“‘The Jews are undoubtably a race, but they are not human.’ Adolf Hitler.” (Spiegelman 10) In grade 10 Canadian History, one of the topics students cover is the Holocaust.…
Although there has been other genocides, the Holocaust has been the worst event that took place in history. Two million Jews and other minorities were targeted and killed. The Holocaust was successful in carrying out all the atrocities they did under the regime of Hitler, because Hitler and his followers were organize and tactical when caring out their reign of terror. Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic memoir, Maus, written by Art Speigelman’s (1991). The author writes about his father experience in the concentration camp.…
Humanity is “all human beings collectively: the human race” (dictionary.com). When a massive event happens like genocides or a terrorist attack the people who are involved are affected physically and mentally. This is what occurred in 1941-1945 during the Holocaust; it was a time of horror for many Jews. “About a third of all Jewish people alive at the time were murdered in the Holocaust” (http://www.factslides.com/s-Holocaust). Maus is a story about a survivor named Vladek, he survived Auschwitz, which has affected him until the day of his death.…
I. Introduction: “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” (Wiesel, 1956, 3) explains why the living (especially survivor’s children) are responsible for keeping the stories of this time period alive. a. Purpose: to inform my audience about the Jewish Holocaust and its subsequent effects on survivor’s children and their psychological composition; to inform why these long lasting effects are relevant to human psychology and our world b. The complex and traumatic series of events during the Jewish Holocaust resulted in almost two thirds of the population being killed. c. Of those who survived, there were many pretenses surrounding the remainder of their lives and their children’s lives due to a newly adopted and pessimistic…
Many centuries ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero, a roman philosopher, emphasized that “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living”, revealing just how important memory is. In Night, by Elie Wiesel, and Maus, by Art Spiegelman, memory serves a very important purpose in telling the stories of the Holocaust. Memory is an innate human ability that provides for a plethora of uses. It is extremely useful in genocide, which is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially people of a specific ethnic group. When this occurs, the culture and identity of that ethnicity is put in danger of being lost forever.…
Art Spiegelman’s Maus tells a compelling story about his father, family and other people’s experiences during the Holocaust. Spiegelman didn’t only use comic as his way of portraying the Holocaust but uses animal metaphor to depict behaviors of disparate nationality and the identity of the characters. The portraying of animals as humans makes the reader accentuate more strongly on the horrific nature of the Holocaust; as these mistreated animals are indeed human beings. The use of animal allegory analyzes the relationships, similarities, and the differences of animals and humans. Also, In the comic novel, the Germans treated the Jews as vermin instead of humans; affirmed by the metaphor of German cats chasing Jewish mice.…
The Nazi’s extermination and torture of Jews and other’s lasted for a period of twelve years. “The principal images you see today of the Holocaust are of barbed wire, disease-ridden barracks, malnourished prisoners, gas chambers and crematoria’s.” (Levi, 535) This is different from the atomic bombings because the effects of the bombs were still being seen seventy years later. The value of the survivor testimonies from these tragic events in history is to remember the effects that Warfare has on civilian population, it is important to record each survivors experience as to add to the big picture of the brutality of men of power before the survivors are forgotten, and remember what can happen if tyranny and technology are not kept in check by the morals of the…
Most readers and analysists of Art Spiegelman’s Maus tend to become so focused on the grim nature of the comic’s subject matter that they overlook the possibility that there exists aspects beyond guilt and trauma that influence its narrative. Likewise, the most commonly overlooked of these aspects, and also possibly one of the most controversial, is humor. Throughout the centuries, individuals have employed humour, whether it be in the form of satire, irony, or understatement, to help them cope with trauma. Likewise, it comes as no surprise that, in detailing his father’s horrific experiences as a Jew in Nazi occupied Poland through a comic where Jews are represented as mice, Poles as pigs, and Germans as cats, Spiegelman employs humor. Moreover,…