Summary Of The Holocaust By Art Spiegelman

Scottish poet, Robert Burns wrote, “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless millions mourn.” When looking back on the history of our society, many incidences that reflect this thought clearly. One that stands out to me is the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the “purification” of Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler from 1939 to 1945. There were millions of people that were cycled through the concentration camps that the Nazis built. The millions of people that were killed are just a small portion of the billions that were indirectly impacted by the horrible actions of the Nazis. I believe that Nazi Germany performed inhumane acts on the people that they put into the concentration camps, therefore indirectly affecting millions, possibly billions, of people.

In the Holocaust by Bullets Father Patrick Desbois recounts the tale of the mission he gave himself to discover and inspect all the mass burial sites of a million Jews exterminated by Nazi Mobile Units in Ukraine amid World War II. He started by wanting to travel to the burial site in Rawa Ruska where his grandfather Claudius had been taken during world war II. He finally got the chance to visit Rawa Ruska in the mid-90s.On another visit he asked the mayor where the Jews from the work camp were buried and the mayor said he didn’t know and he changed the subject. A year later there was a new memorial put up and at the celebration Desbois asked a violin player if he knew where the mass grave for the Jews from the work camp was and he knew and

Vladek is depicted as a hero who shows countless acts of selflessness and generosity and a villain who is, “opinionated, tight-fisted, and self-involved”. (Brown 6) Art Spiegelman’s book Maus, tells the story of how Vladek and Anja Spiegelman survived the Holocaust. Spiegelman illustrates Vladek as a man who single-handily saved his family from starvation and Auschwitz in World War I. During Spiegelman’s interviews, we get an idea of Vladek’s darker side since the war ended. Mala to speak of her astonishment and disgust in Vladek’s character. Which leaves us to question how truthfully these stories are being told. In the end, Vladek’s unsuccessful heroism is a constant reminder of his failure; survival with Anja was always easier, after her death, Vladek pushes everyone away with his “guilt and manipulation” (Brown 7)

In the book Escape Children of the Holocaust, author Allan Zullo highlights the struggles of three innocent Jewish children, Hanci Hollander, Halina Litman and Gideon Frieder. All three children were born in different countries affected by the Holocaust; Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. If you did not know, the Holocaust was a gruesome time in the world’s history. There were concentration camps for Jews. All because of one Austrian man, Adolf Hitler, who hated the Jews so much he did not want one Jew left standing. Consequently, he made the Nazi Germans hunt, enslave and kill the Jews.

Thesis Statement: The hardships that Elie Wiesel faced in the concentration camps lead him to lose faith, until after when realizing it was crucial to keep faith in God despite the horrendous events of the Holocaust.

The word Holocaust refers to the mass murder of 6 million European Jews by the German Nazi regime during World War II. It began in 1933 and ended in 1945. The ruler of Germany during this time was Adolf Hitler. He and the Nazis put the Jew in concentration camps, where thousands were killed everyday. This was one of the worst if not the worst genocides in history. Many books have been written to document survivors’ testimony of this horrific event. Elie Wiesel shares his story and Art Spiegelman shares his father’s story in the books Night and Maus. Comparisons can be drawn between Maus and Night through the author's purpose for writing , the survivor’s experiences, and the author's perspective.

"It was crying and praying. So long we survived. And now we waited only that they shoot, because we had not else to do" (267). This quote from the end of the novel ironically describes what the Jewish people endured after the concentration camps. Vladek Spieglman among other suffered through traumatic experiences; though Vladek certainly did survive the holocaust, old Vladek did not. Post-Holocaust it is revealed by Spieglman that his father, Vladek, develops two personalities—before and after the concentration camps. Vladek’s post-holocaust life was haunted by the horrors he witnessed while being in the concentration camps; he went from a young, handsome resourceful man to a miserable, old man who does nothing but complain.

The quote by Wiesel has a deep meaning that can impact what people have learned about the holocaust. The Jewish holocaust was a devastating event that affected a worldwide number of people then and now. It had come to a point during the holocaust where “fear was greater than hunger” (Wiesel 59) during those times. The words written by Wiesel is indicating that the fear of death and misfortune was far greater than hunger. When people hear the word holocaust they think of how tragic it is, but they do not know true essence of what the survivors had to go through. When discussing the holocaust we learn that the Jews were downsized to animals “faster, you filthy dogs” (Wiesel 85). Jew and non-Jews in the concentration camps began to lose a sense

Peter Longerich's Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews is a recent contribution to the contemporary scholarly literature on the subject. The book was originally published in 1998 in German, under the title Politik der Vernichtung, Politics of Destruction. This 2010 English-language release is, as the author claims, shorter in some areas and longer in others. The primary additions include a chapter on anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic, which adds considerable meat to the contextual evidence that Longerich includes in his history of the Holocaust. Moreover, the author draws on the release of new primary source data from the archives in Warsaw and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, which have only recently been revealed, archived, and cataloged.

•The most famous book in the Holocaust was written by a 13 year old girl, and it has been read by 10 million people.

Imagine, you 're running for your life from tyrants, and you’re only fifteen. Not only would they kill you, but they would make you dig your own grave, terrified and freezing and the price for your capture is $247.78. Then a man comes to you with open arms and offers you shelter. One man who displayed this affection to jews like this in the holocaust. His name, Anton Sukhinski.

Spiegelman not only experiences guilt from getting commercial success, but guilt from being a survivor’s son. Even though he was not even alive during the Holocaust, his father’s experience become a lens that that Spiegelman views himself and his father through. While talking with his therapist, Spiegelman says “No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz” and his therapist replies saying “But you weren’t in Auschwitz – you were in Rego Park” (Spiegelman 44). Just because his father survived the holocaust, he feels guilty for acknowledging his own accomplishment. This shows how the events in World War 2 continues to not only haunt the survivors of the war but the generation with survivors as parents. Spiegelman makes it clear that it is not only children of holocaust survivors that are confronted with war related guilt. While talking with the reporters, he says

The Holocaust was called the “Final Solution” used by Adolf Hitler to exterminate all the Jews by putting them in Concentration Camps and killing them in many ways. Vladek is a survivor during the Holocaust and he was traumatized from this experience because he starts having Holocaust flashbacks. In his book, Maus, Art Spiegelman explores the themes of symbolism, historical background, & religion. Maus is the story about the author’s dad, Vladek, during his time in the Holocaust. It shows symbolism because it shows Jews becoming mice, Germans becoming cats, Americans becoming dogs, etc. It shows historical background because it shows Jews being killed by Nazis just like back then in the late 1930’s - the early 1940’s. And it shows some religion because the book shows the Nazis & most of the polish (that are pigs) discriminating against the Jewish population because of the dictator, Adolf Hitler. When the story begins, Art comes over to Vladek’s house & he is remarried to a person that Vladek has known before the war, named Mala because his 1st wife, Anja, killed herself on May 21, 1968. After Art ate dinner, Vladek took him into his old room and Art ask Vladek about his life in Poland during the war. He tells Art before he met Anja, he had a girlfriend named Lucia Greenberg, and she was obsessed with him. When he met Anja, he left Lucia while she begged for him to stay because she did not like her when she saw her picture and Vladek loved Anja more than Lucia. Vladek joins

She is living with her aunt Gitl and Uncle Shmuel, after her parents’ death from cholera. When she tries to tell them she’s from the future, they think that she is recovering from the disease and that she is still mourning her parents’ death. The next day they all are going to the next town, so her uncle can wed Fayge who lives in the next town over, but be for they are wed Nazi soldiers demand that they come with them.

The Holocaust presents a race for survival through which it reveals the ever-changing complexity of human’s nature according to various situations. Most importantly, the difficult times of the Holocaust strip away the superficial layers and reveal the essence of genuine relationships. Spiegelman opens his novel with a quote from Vladek: “If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!” (Spiegelman 6). Indeed, Vladek has