Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel Maus is a true account of his father Vladek as a Polish Jew in Nazi Europe during WWII. Simultaneously, it reveals the strained relationship of the author with his difficult father as he prods him to relate his experiences during the war. Spiegelman employs a visual metaphor by illustrating his characters with animal faces. Jews are portrayed as mice, the Germans cats, and other races given similar treatment. Rather than a distraction, this approach helps the reader deal with the harsh reality endured by Vladek and his fellow Jews against increasing persecution and eventual imprisonment in concentration camps – in Vladek's case, Auschwitz. Make no mistake; this is no mere comic book glossing over the Holocaust in Cliff-Notes fashion. It's an unblinking view of one man's journey through state-sponsored genocide, and how he survived using his wits. The book is an intense, heart-rending, and unsentimental memoir, equal on it's own merits compared to other classic literature.
Reflecting on the powerful drama of Vladek’s struggle, I gleaned from his account many practical principles and techniques employed in his fight for survival. These are not of the “living off the land" survivalist genre, but proven to work in a methodical state-planned "death by design" environment. I think they are relevant today as valuable strategies to deal with the ongoing "progressive" uncertain world we live in.
Tangible goods. Vladek had married into a rich family. Since the currency of his country was debased after occupation, he made good use of his family's valuables to sell, barter, and bribe during the early hard times. Even Nazi guards were not above taking a bribe to look the other way, though this was fraught with peril, as they would sometimes reneged, and merely shoot the other party. He took special care to cache some of the valuables, which he would later reclaim after the war to help rebuild his life.
Skills and networking. The confiscation of Jewish businesses and factories prior to the camps left Vladek without a job. He learned how to make and repair shoes in a Jewish Ghetto workshop to provide for his family. In the book, there is a page with detailed illustrated instructions related by Vladek to his son on how he repaired a ripped shoe separated from the sole. He also gleaned just enough knowledge of tinsmithing to bluff his way into a workshop later at Auschwitz – which saved him from an early death being chosen for hard physical labor.
Vladek was also fluent in German, and knew some English. These talents opened doors to communicate to people of many backgrounds, giving him an edge in setting up a network system for survival and bartering. One time in a holding cell, Vladek met an illiterate man who asked if he could write letters for him in German so he could request food packages from his family. Vladek wrote the letters and the man shared the food he received with him out of gratitude. Later in Auschwitz, Vladek's life hung in the balance when a SS officer demanded a badly ripped boot be repaired like new in the morning – or else. No having sufficient skill to fix it, Vladek contacted a highly skilled shoe repairman elsewhere in the camp. Spending a day's ration of bread, he got the shoe repaired like new to the SS officer's satisfaction, and received an unexpected sausage in return in payment. More importantly, Vladek paid careful attention to the expert shoe repairman as he fixed the boot, so he could learn to perform the procedure himself. Doing so made him valuable to the Nazi wardens as a skilled craftsman, saving him from wasting his strength from heavy labor assignments.
Gamesmanship. I once saw a documentary of a woman concentration camp survivor who observed that those children found useful for labor and not gassed survived better in the camps than adults. She stated that a child's innate sense of play and imagination proved to be a crucial survival trait, whereas their socially conditioned elders tend to habitually follow the rules, even when they consciously know it will lead to their eventual death. This woman related how as a child in a concentration camp, she would make a game out of hiding from work details, sneaking into other food lines in the camp, and so on to survive – tactics outside the mindset of conventional adults who are bound by the rules of propriety. As Vladek’s former profession was that of a textile salesman, he was experienced in sizing up situations and selecting the best angle to close a sale. This talent made him more mentally flexible to think outside the box than most of his rule-bound comrades. He avoided confrontation, and struck the right note of deferment and self-confidence to pull little mercies and favors even from his Nazi captors.
As time progressed, the hazard of contracting typhus required inmates to show their shirts for inspection prior to being served their daily soup ration. Those inmates who shirts where infested by lice were denied. As it was impossible to keep the only shirt one owned clean, death by starvation would become imminent. By good fortune, Vladek became friends with a French non-Jewish inmate who received Red Cross packages. He was given a chocolate bar, and instead of eating it, he traded it plus a day's worth of bread for a shirt from another inmate. He laboriously cleaned and dried the extra shirt, and wrapped it carefully in scrap paper. By presenting this clean, lice-free shirt at the soup line, his investment guaranteed a constant meal every day that enabled him to stay strong to survive.
Prior to being interned in Auschwitz, Spiegelman's father explained how he and his wife attempted to make it to a safe house by walking through the town of Sosnowiec at night. To prevent being recognized as Jews, Vladek took pains to wear a coat and high calf boots like those worn by off-duty Gestapo officers. He also kept up a conversation in German to his wife Anja to flesh out the deception. It worked, and they found safety for a time. Sometimes the best camouflage is mimicking your enemy.
Faith, Hope, and Charity. One would think these attributes would be the anti-thesis of personal survival in a concentration camp. Mastering the powerful instinct of self-preservation, Vladek endured the wrath of his temperamental barracks Kapo to successfully plead for a pair of wooden shoes, a belt, and spoon – valuable items worth their weight in precious food in the camp – for a friend who was without. Vladek risked losing favor that could literally mean the difference of life or death for him. Yet by helping a friend, he also saved something very valuable within his soul.
In a more practical way, Vladek's generosity with others helped open doors for better jobs and bartering contacts. Sharing his carefully hoarded food with his hardened workshop bosses gained him favors that saved him time and time again from transfers to brutal work details. His survival strategy can be summed up in this simple declaration to his son; "If you want to live, it's good to be friendly."
In the end, Vladek’s ultimate survival still depended as much on faith in providence and the kindness of strangers. The nature of the holocaust and the war itself made individual survival a cruel game of chance, with no seemly consistent moral logic why one survived and another did not. This fatalism resulted in many an inmate choosing to give up and deliberately walk past the verboten fence line to be shot. After being processed at Auschwitz, Vladek suffered an overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness. A priest who was an inmate noticed him, and familiar with Hebrew numerology, divined from the etched serial numbers on Vladek's wrist that he was blessed with much life and good omens to survive his ordeal. At that moment Vladek said he begin to believe he could survive, and that the compassionate priest's words put "another life into him." This renewed will to live would see Vladek through all his ensuing trials to VE Day.
If you have not yet read Maus, I strongly recommend doing so. On a personal level, it serves as a stiff tonic when one is suffering from a bout of self-pity. In a historical perspective, it testifies the terrible results of denying the warning signs of an oppressive government until it is too late. Should we fail to heed its message, we may not end up as fortunate as Vladek to live to tell the tale to our children.
August 25, 2008
