Mountains of Trauma: Maus & The Memory of the Holocaust
(TW: Graphic images, subject matter)
The stain of the Holocaust on human history bleeds deep in the psyche of historians, survivors, and the children of those who made it through alive. There is no shortage of literature reflecting on and detailing the tragedies; there are vast collections of stories and memoirs written in the aftermath. Art Spiegelman, a Nobel laureate and ‘second-generation’ Holocaust victim, drafted Maus in an effort to reconcile the trauma he inherited. Spiegelman copes with that heritage through art, specifically drawings in Maus, a graphic narrative retelling his father’s memory of his experience in Auschwitz. Photography, another medium of art, was used during the Holocaust as well, and photographs juxtapose the function of drawings to reveal just how difficult it is to capture memory and mountains of trauma.
The unique angle that Spiegelman provides in his work is that of a Holocaust survivor’s child. The transmission of Holocaust trauma is a phenomenon that psychologists have witnessed for decades following World War II. The children of imprisoned persons, especially Jewish persons, are observed exhibiting similar/the same psychological responses that their parents exhibited. Trauma is passed on, and memory is perpetuated in stories, drawings, and photographs.
Artie provides this perspective of inherited trauma to the canon of Holocaust literature, and the medium of comics creates even more angles to explore memory and emotion.
The above panel, taken from the first page of the time flies episode in Maus II, summarizes accurately the distressing situation in which Spiegelman resides for the entirety of Maus’ construction.
In this image, Artie is wearing a mouse mask while sitting at his drawing table. There is a large pile of dead mouse bodies surrounding him on the floor, and flies circle above the bodies. Through the window a watchtower can be seen, lurking outside above the corners of the camp. In the drawing of Maus, Artie has transported himself mentally and visually into Auschwitz. The panel itself occupies half of the page, and its sheer volume invokes the mountainous volume of trauma that Artie must reconcile with. The use of shadow and highlight directs the eye to the man behind the mask, sitting at the table. Spiegelman made a mountain of bodies strewn about carelessly as they would have been treated in the camp. In Maus, Artie reports of doing research about the camp where his parents were, and the image conjugated here is one that might come to mind for many. Graphic, emotional, silencing images of bodies like this circulated post-liberation, but it is juxtaposed with the method of comics, which are usually lighthearted in nature.
Spiegelman uses the text boxes to jump back and forth with the past and present, representing Artie’s train of thought in regards to his own memories and knowledge. In the other panels that share the page, Artie is thinking in the same pattern — juxtaposition of present events and past — as shown here:
This collision of present and past is the essence of memory; memories are past experiences re-contextualized in the present. Spiegelman’s use of a text box as opposed to a caption box ascribes these memories and thoughts to Artie himself. Even though he never saw the pile of bodies or the watchtower, his reality in this panel is cathartic. He is transported into his father’s memories, a heritage that he did not choose but must reconcile. The vehicle for this transportation is comics. Spiegelman never witnessed Auschwitz himself, so drawing is the tool used to pay witness to his father’s memories.
By drawing attention to the very creation of Maus, Spiegelman demonstrates the unrelenting persistence of the Holocaust even across generations. He also shows how memory is particularly powerful; images are burned into the mind. The use of comics as a medium works in tandem with the power of memory. Memory is not confined to paragraphs; it is also the non-linear weaving of images and dialogue. In the case of Vladek’s memories, the subject matter is extremely graphic and emotionally distressing. Artie is aware of this fact and his anxieties are shown in his posture on the page. What he aims to represent is a glimpse of the most horrible event in human history, and he uses a medium known for lightheartedness. Earlier in Maus II, Artie exclaims:
“It’s so presumptuous of me…How am I supposed to make any sense out of Auschwitz?…Of the Holocaust?” (Spiegelman 14).
Making sense of the Holocaust has proved an impossible task thus far in human history, and it may not need to be accomplished. Artie’s work functions not to solve all the problems that the Holocaust raises, but to reconcile with the trauma that was left in its wake.
Towards the end of World War II, Allied troops moved across Europe. As these troops discovered and liberated concentration camps — as Vladek remembers in Maus — photographs were taken. A primary reason for taking such images was due to the reports of war crimes committed by Germany. Documentation would be necessary for inevitable legal proceedings. The following is a graphic image taken likely by an Allied soldier.
The focal point of this image is the morose mountain that the Nazi directors of the camp left behind. The bodies are piled inhumanely, carelessly, and abandoned to the decay of time while the directors fled. While this image was not taken from the Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation, it expresses the same deep, unavoidable human trauma that perpetuated long after World War II. This widespread wound is echoed in the children of Holocaust survivors, and shared, although in reduced concentrations, with the rest of the world.
While the latter of these images is a ‘real,’ direct image taken at a concentration camp, the first serves as an echo of the memory of the latter. While Art Spiegelman never witnessed this pile of bodies, in his drafting of the image — and Maus itself — is subject to the horrors that his father Vladek witnessed firsthand. Such is the value of the two different mediums: they demonstrate the difference between Vladek’s memory and Art’s understanding of the story. A photograph is an image captured in a moment; it is present tense. The few soldiers who had camera access during WWII liberation took photographs of what they saw, but most of the circulated photos followed the styles of war photography and general photojournalism. The image at hand certainly is not utilizing very many complex techniques and only takes limited liberties in terms of camera angle, exposure, framing, motion, and other qualities. The photograph is stark; the technology of the time limited the colors to grey scale.
While the focal point of this image is eerily similar to that of Maus’ image, the purpose of this photograph is entirely different. The photograph was taken as a way to document accurately the scene at hand. While the soldiers are indeed forced to confront the trauma, their job was to assess and document the situation from a third-party point of view. The photograph confronts the viewer with the reality of what the Nazi regime truly did. There is no personal investment in this image; capturing this moment was a task assigned to them.Therefore, the aesthetic choices in this image are not essential to the understanding of the image. In the liberation-photography medium, the function was documentation, not personal reconciliation. The personal narratives of the Holocaust belong not to these soldiers, but to the victims, and this photograph recognizes that it was not their story to tell. The photograph depicts the soldiers’ perspective of the aftermath.
Drawings, on the other hand, especially in the form of a graphic novel, are reverberations of memories. In the case of Maus, Artie’s drawings are of memories that he himself did not experience, but that were handed down through story. This inheritance is reconciled on the page.
The smells, temperature, textures, sounds, and colors are markedly absent from this medium. The photographs presented above also fall short; the technology at the time limited the photographer to black and white images. In retrospect, this lacking of details might be criticized by people now and discouraging in the effort to understand Holocaust experiences. However, art is as close as the living may get. Art Spiegelman was not present, either, and his work does not pretend that he was there. His work simply embodies the retelling of his father’s experience.
Art Spiegelman willingly experiences secondhand the most large-scale, horrendous event in human history through the physical representation of his father’s memory. His art is a coping mechanism for the psychological scars. Through the memories of an individual, Artie takes on the mountain of grief accompanied with the entire event, the same mountain drawn on page 41 of Maus II. He is forced to reconcile with the trauma, and does so through art.
Bystanders of the memories, the spectators of the past, the inheritors of trauma: we have the position of interpretation. The non-survivors and non-soldiers of this event are put in the role of interpreting what is left behind. It is extremely difficult to capture memory in drawing, photograph, or prose. In the case of Maus, Artie captures a memory that does not even belong to him. The soldiers too likely experienced difficultly capturing the photograph of the innocent slaughtered, knowing they were too late for intervention.
The drawing gives a true picture of Vladek’s memory, but the photograph shows a more simplified of the ‘actual’ reality. These two images are not in opposition to each other; they work in tandem, stitching together a narrative for the audience, for Artie, and for all who were not firsthand witnesses. The inherited, mountainous trauma must be reconciled.
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Written for a North Carolina State University literary course in Fall 2015, under the instruction of James Mulholland
