Maus: A Banned Book, a Necessary Truth

A book banned in Tennessee’s curriculum for “inappropriate” details. A documentation of the Holocaust, taken from the accounts of the author’s father. Retold as anthropomorphic redesigns, with the Jewish people portrayed as mice and the Nazis portrayed as cats. A horrific reminder of what humanity is capable of. And a recount of generational trauma.

Art Spiegelman recounts his father’s life story, from fighting against the Nazis to being sent to Auschwitz and to the personal details of his past lives, one being a factory owner before it was ransacked. Spiegelman’s linework and art are both detailed yet simple enough to evoke the scenery, both in the writer’s present and his father’s past. Cartoony, which makes it even more uncanny considering the subject matter. Jewish people are portrayed as mice, the Nazis as cats, and Polish people as pigs. This anthropomorphic portrayal is uncanny yet effectively illustrates how racist the Nazis viewed anyone who wasn’t “pure Aryan.” We also see the Americans portrayed as dogs when they free the concentration camps, perhaps a nod to Americans’ love for dogs and to emphasize that they are not Europeans like the Germans and Polish.

Spiegelman does not hold back as he depicts every horrific account from his father in great detail. A grave yet necessary portrayal, as such matters should not be taken lightly. The relationship between father and son is strained yet still intact. Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, is in his present marriage with a woman named Mala, a fellow Holocaust survivor. His current marriage to Mala is strained as well, with Vladek constantly complaining about her mannerisms, most notably that she supposedly leaves messes behind and that she, like his son, does not understand that money is scarce. We even see Mala talking to Spiegelman about how Vladek treats her like a maid, with Spiegelman relating to her. While Spiegelman chalks it up to Vladek being a Holocaust survivor, Mala retorts that she too is a survivor, much like many others, and that no one else acts like Vladek.

Clearly, we can see the effects of generational trauma, with Vladek passing this onto his son, and it wasn’t just the Holocaust. Vladek’s life story before the Holocaust also details how his father starved him and his brothers to prevent them from being sent off to Siberia for military training. In contrast, when Spiegelman was a child, Vladek forced him to finish food whether he liked it or not. One can assume Vladek was trying to prevent the same traumas he experienced as a child, albeit very cruelly.

Vladek recounts his time imprisoned in Auschwitz after he and Anja are captured by the Gestapo. Being fed rotten cheese, forced to give a Gestapo officer English lessons, and witnessing those around him being abused and dying, Spiegelman shows all that his father recounts, exposing the horrors that his father and others in those camps endured. Despite the antisemitism and racism Vladek experienced in Poland, he himself is no better, as he immediately judges a black man as a criminal, using a past account to excuse and even differentiate his racism. Vladek is indeed a complex person, yet this does not justify his bigotry. This book not only captures the horrors of the Holocaust but also reveals generational trauma and the complexity within one’s own family.

Many who excuse the banning of this book claim it is because of profanity and nudity within its pages, referencing the nude woman found dead in the tub after a suicide. To me, this seems like a flimsy excuse to cover the fact that perhaps this book was banned for its explicit anti-fascist themes and its unfiltered portrayal of the Holocaust’s realities. After all, there are books that portray the Statue of David, a famous sculpture depicting a blatantly nude figure.

In this era of censorship, we need to teach everyone, young and old, about the Holocaust. This cannot be forgotten, and you cannot erase what happened over a singular comic panel. In an era of genocide, especially in Palestine, the erasure of trans people and BIPOC in America, it is important that we preserve this knowledge and learn from it, so that people will stop committing the same wrongdoings generation after generation.