MAUS - holocaust comic book
Lise H (batlise@stic.net)
Sat, 20 Jun 1998 16:03:46 -0500
I was required to read these when I was in college a t the University of
Tx in San Antonio, Texas (USA). I truely beleive that both books relay
feelings and subtext in their pictures that could not have been
relvealed any other way. I think these books are an excellent way of
communicating to students not only what happened to Mr. Spiegleman
during his ordeal, but what that did to him for the rest of his life.
For him, and for many the holocaust did not truely end when WWII ended,
and its effects continue. We must all never forget that this happened,
lest it happen again.
Lise Hogan
Spec. Ed. Teacher
! wrote:
>
> A comic book artist named Art Spiegelman did a two part comic book (more
> book size than comics) on the holocaust called MAUS. Despite the fact it is
> all in comic book style, it is an amazingly vivid account of the holocaust
> through the eyes of Spiegelman's father who was a Jew in Poland, lived in
> the Holocaust Ghettoes, tried to escape the Nazis through hiding in the
> countryside, was captured and sent to a couple concentration camps and then
> actually participated in the dismantling of the "showers" at one of the
> camps in the Nazi attempt to cover up and destroy the camps before the
> liberation armies saw them. Maybe not the best way to convince unbelievers
> as it is a true comic book with the Jews represented as mice, the Nazis as
> cats, and the American liberators as dogs, but despite this seeming ignominy
> of treatment, it is a truly moving and potent description of events in the
> Holocaust. I do not normally read comics and at the time I found these, I
> had no particular interest in the Holocaust, yet I could not stop reading
> these until the very end, due to the personal detail included. It was the
> thing that piqued my interest. Later I found the few actual phtographs by
> Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capra, and others, of the camps as found by
> the liberation forces. Very striking photographs, and not be discounted in
> understanding the tragedy. ...Rhett M.
> ~~
> ((((OO OO))))
> >
> <===>
> "What matters deafness of the ear,
> when the mind hears.
> The true deafness,
> the incurable deafness,
> is that of the mind."
>
> --Victor Hugo