Artie goes to visit his father, who he hasn’t seen in a long while. They’ve never been very close. Artie is an artist who is keen to write a graphic novel about his father’s memories in World War II. Finally, beginning with how his parents met, his father opens up about his life through the war.

Artie’s mother’s family were rich, and so her father helps his new son-in-law in business. They were a well-off Jewish family, and helped others when they could. But the war ravages their lives, despite having money and trinkets to bribe soldiers and officials to find hiding places to avoid the trains bound for Auschwitz.

But their fate is inevitable, and to Auschwitz they are sent, separated and bound to wonder whether they would ever see each other again.

Artie’s father has been irrevocably changed by the war, driving his son, his wives and any one around him nuts – with his scrimping, hoarding, racist comments, and a deep mistrust held within. This behaviour is present throughout the story, making it hard for Artie to ask the questions he needed answers for.

Maus I was written in 1987 and when joined by Maus II, as in this edition, it received The Pulitzer Prize in The Special Awards and Citations in 1992. The characters of this brilliant graphic novel are all animals. The Jewish = Mice. The German = Cats. The Polish = Pigs. French = Frogs. Maus is Mouse in German, hunted by the cats, and considered vermin by the Nazis and SS.

I felt for Artie wanting to learn about his family history, and facing his difficult father and his demands, but also for his father as he remembered those terrible years of his life.

Maus also shows another side of the Holocaust I haven’t read about – years of moving constantly, finding constant hiding places, being betrayed again and again, but using his foresight to survive horror after horror, all from one survivor. Stunning!

Author/Illustrator – Art Spielgelman

Age – 12+

(Holocaust, War, WWII, World War II, World War 2, Survivor, Auschwitz, German, Jewish, Poland, Hiding, Courage, Family, Elderly, Memories, Memory)