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Maus means “mouse�� in German; and part of what gives this graphic novel of the Nazi Holocaust its unique power is the way in which cartoon artist Art Spiegelman utilizes the cat-and-mouse metaphor to describe the struggle of European Jews to stay alive while being hunted by the Nazis. Spiegelman draws from real life, and from his own family history, in conveying the events of Maus �� and somehow, the stylized nature of this graphic novel, which depicts its Jewish characters as mice and its Nazi characters as cats, causes the horrors of the Holocaust to come through in an innovative and moving way.

Maus is A Survivor’s Tale, and the survivor referred to in that second element of the title is a real-life Holocaust survivor: Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek. Maus was published in two volumes, and this first volume has the subtitle My Father Bleeds History �� a powerful reference not only to the cruelty and violence of the Holocaust, but also to the way in which the Holocaust haunts those who managed to survive it.

This graphic novel moves back and forth between two worlds. One is a 1970’s “present,�� set in the New York City neighborhood of Rego Park, Queens; there, Art Spiegelman, in a series of visits to his ill and aging father Vladek, tries to persuade Vladek to recount his Holocaust experiences. The other is the 1930’s and 1940’s history of the Holocaust events that Vladek experienced and survived.

Within the context of Holocaust literature, what seems to give Maus its unique power, as mentioned above, is its use of the cat-and-mouse metaphor. The Jews, in Spiegelman’s work, are depicted as mice; the Nazis as cats; the non-Jewish people of Poland as pigs; and the Americans of modern New York as dogs. For the Nazi predators, the Jews are nothing but “prey�� �� and because they cannot hope to prevail through physical force, the “mice�� must use their wits to try to survive.

As Maus begins, the reader at once gets a sense of a broken family with a traumatic history and a family dynamic characterized by emotional distance; Art Spiegelman writes that he and his father “weren’t that close�� and adds that “My Mother’s suicide and his two heart attacks had taken their toll�� (p. 11). Vladek Spiegelman, after the post-war suicide of his wife Anja, remarried, but his marriage to his second wife Mala is not a happy one. Against this backdrop of an unhappy family situation in a modern American setting, Vladek Spiegelman begins to recount his “survivor’s tale�� of the Holocaust.

The early chapters of Maus I set forth Vladek’s early life in pre-war Poland, including his marriage to Anja, whose post-partum depression following the birth of their first child prompts the Spiegelmans to travel by train to a sanitarium in Czechoslovakia. In a small town on the way to the sanitarium, Vladek experiences a grim foretaste of what the future will bring: “It was the beginning of 1938 �� before the war �� hanging high in the center of town, it was a Nazi flag. Here was the first time I saw, with my own eyes, the swastika�� (p. 32). Art Spiegelman makes this panel larger than the others �� five mice look fearfully through the train window, with the Nazi swastika flag looming outside the window, like a grim black harbinger at the top and center of the panel �� using the graphic-novel format skillfully to reinforce the ideas that he is conveying.

Vladek, as he tells his story to Art, is drafted into the Polish Army as the Second World War begins, and is taken prisoner as the Polish forces fall before the Nazi Wehrmacht. Seeing that the Jews are separated from, and treated much more harshly than, the Polish prisoners, Vladek learns quickly the strategies for survival �� speak German to the Nazis, volunteer when opportunities for work are offered, stand in the second line rather than the first �� and eventually he is released from his P.O.W. confinement, and is able to rejoin his family in Sosnowiec.

Once Vladek is released, however, his struggle to survive, and to ensure his family’s survival, continues on a new front. The Nazi measures against the Jewish population increase in intensity �� all Jews are ordered into ghettos, and many Jews, such as the elderly, are taken away, never to be seen again. As Vladek recalls, “We didn’t yet know of Auschwitz �� of the ovens �� but we were anyway afraid�� (p. 86).

Chapter 5, “Mouse Holes,�� features an early attempt by Art Spiegelman to cope with the trauma of his mother’s suicide �� an actual underground comics feature from 1973 called “Prisoner of the Hell Planet: A Case History,�� in which he used stylized imagery and characters (albeit human beings rather than cats and mice) to convey the pain of learning that his mother had taken her own life. The black-bordered pages of this portion of the book -- similar to what one might see on a funeral notice -- emphasize how Art Spiegelman, like his father, is dealing with his own emotional pain and sense of bereavement; and the thin lines and sharp contours of this feature, in contrast with the thicker lines and more blurred contours of Maus, emphasize the difference in time between the periods of history being dramatized.

Returning to the main line of narrative of Maus I, Vladek and a number of his family survive a selection process at the Sosnowiec stadium �� of 30,000 people there, about one-third are chosen for work, while the remainder are consigned to extermination. When orders come that all the Jews of Sosnowiec are to be sent to Auschwitz, some take their own lives; others build bunkers, below coal bins and above rooftops, in which to hide from the Nazis. These bunkers, set forth in great detail in larger panels, are some of the “mouse holes�� in which Vladek and others attempt to hide from the Nazi genocide.

Precariously sheltered in the basement of the home of a Polish woman whose anti-Semitic husband does not know she is sheltering Jews, Vladek attempts to procure for himself and Anja an escape to Hungary, where things are said to be better than they are in Poland. Panels showing mice wearing pig masks convey the perilous process through which a Jewish person masquerades as a Pole in order to be able to circulate outdoors. But they are betrayed; and a large concluding panel shows them arriving at Auschwitz, where the gate bears that mocking inscription of Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work Makes Free��). As Vladek puts it, “We came here to the concentration camp Auschwitz. And we knew that from here we will not come out anymore…We knew the stories �� that they will gas us and throw us in the ovens. This was 1944 �� we knew everything. And here we were�� (p. 157).

The reader knows, of course �� for this is a framed tale �� that Vladek and Anja will survive the Holocaust and the Second World War; and therefore the reader of Maus I is likely to want to go straight on to Maus II (with its subtitle And Here My Troubles Began) to learn how they survived. But there is one more shocking discovery to be made from this first volume of Maus.

Throughout the book, Art Spiegelman has been searching through his father’s house for his mother’s diaries, in which she recounted her Holocaust experiences; he feels that the content of the diaries will enrich his graphic novel, and the reader senses that he wants to reconnect with his beloved and lost mother as well. The ultimate fate of the diaries, and Art’s response when he learns of what happened, causes Maus I to close on a disturbing note in both its present-day and past-time narratives.

We live in a time when increasing percentages of people, here in the United States and around the world, either don’t know that the Holocaust happened, deny that the Holocaust occurred, or claim that reports about what happened during the Holocaust are somehow “exaggerated.�� And Maus has recently become the target of book-banners; a Tennessee school board recently voted unanimously to remove the novel from its 8th-grade language arts curriculum, citing concerns about nudity and profanity. It is heartbreaking to reflect upon how the members of this school board have acted as if curse words, or images of naked people, are somehow more "obscene" than the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis against six million innocent people between 1939 and 1945.

In such times as these, a work like Maus �� with its graphic-novel format that might reach those readers who would not be inclined to take up a more “conventional�� work of Holocaust history or literature �� becomes more vitally needed than ever. Maus is one of the most important graphic novels ever created.