The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Book Review: Possibly the best book on the holocaust and a brilliant work
Summary: 5 Stars
MAUS is an extraordinary book. The author-unsparing of himself and his father, the survivor-presents an honest, unsentimental, extremely human account of one man's experience (the author's father) of the holocaust and the effects the experience had on his post-war life, his family, and especially on his son, the author and artist who created this masterpiece. The comic book format allows the author to express the unexpressible.The book contains humor, tragedy and paradox. It allows the reader to enter into the experience in an intimate way. By going back and forth from the present to the past, we experience the sharp contrast between the incredible freedom and comfort of our modern western lives and the horrific mind-numbing nightmare that became the daily experience of millions of people so very few years ago.(We also see how that "nightmare" continues to pervade the present life of the man who has lived through it.)
MAUS is one man's story. It is clear that Mr. Spiegelman has no personal animosity towards any people or nation. His most difficult relationship, and this adds such a fascinating and human twist to the tale, was with his father!
Book Review: Pulitzer prize-winning "comic" book takes on the holocaust
Summary: 5 Stars
What an incredible book! The honesty and intimacy leap off the pages. It manages to entertain-there's quite a bit of humor- while dealing with perhaps the darkest times in our century.It is not just a story of the holocaust, but the story of a father and a son. It is the story of how the artist, the son of a survivor, mananges to deal with the legacy of his father's suffering...and heroism; How he reconciles his feelings of love and guilt and admiration with feelings of anger and frustration and despair that the same man, his father, evokes in him.
WARNING: Because the Polish people have never, to my knowledge, done any self-examination (unlike the Germans and now other nations), this book may offend some people of Polish descent. Since this true history tells the story of a Polish Jew, and since all the death camps were in Poland, this book therefore inadvertantly shows the pernicious anti-semitism and murderous participation of the Polish people (as individuals-not as a nation) in the persecution of the Jews.
Book Review: Brilliant work, and NOT defamatory to "Poles"
Summary: 5 Stars
MAUS is, to be sure, a brilliant work. My parents survived the Holocaust, read Maus, and affirm that it captures well the times, although every individual experienced the Holocaust in their own way due to their own unique circumstances. One reviewer asserts, essentially, that Maus defames Poles. This is a simplistic, defensive position: Maus simply reports the reality experienced by one family, and their reality is that Poles were complicit in the extermination of jews. My own family witnessed extreme (murderous) Polish antisemitism and collaboration with the Nazis in the destruction of the Jews. The fact that Germans and Poles struggles with each other -- indeed the Germans wanted to enslave the Poles -- is irrelevant to the fact that both hated Jews due to antisemitism, which has its roots in medieval Catholic church doctrine that the "Jews killed Christ." (A Polish housekeeper we had as a child was surprised that I did not have horns, as she thought all Jews had!) To say that 3,000,000 Poles helped Jews is absurd -- get real! And, Poles who in fact have been proven to have saved Jews have been honored by Israel at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial (like Oscar Schindler, etc.) There were good Poles, bad Poles, and indifferent Poles, but no serious scholar disputes ingrained Polish antisemitism and widespread collaboration with the Nazis against Jews.Book Review: Great!!!!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book puts the life of the Holucast in the view that is easy enough for kids and teens to understand.Book Review: Presenting the old anew
Summary: 5 Stars
What a powerful way to tell the same story to new ears. Like the film, Life is Beautiful, we have to tell the story over and over again, and present our history in ways that allow eveyone to take-in. Terrific!