week 7

Maus was a very easy read in itself, but emotionally difficult. The story starts out in a sweet manner of son visiting his father and his new wife, but asks his father to tell him the story of the war with the nazis. You follow his story from the moment he meets his wife into marriage and having their first child, all the normal everyday life stuff. But when he starts to tell the story of how he became a prisoner of war, I felt myself getting anxious knowing death and torture would soon enter the storyline. He stayed strong while living in the cold tents, until he was able to be relocated to a place that had warm beds and food to eat as long as he worked each day. He was able to sneak upon a train and convince a polish officer to hide him from the germans, using their disgust of germans to his advantage. When he's finally reunited with his family, as is well for a moment. Soon he finds himself working on the black-market for whatever he can find to help bring in food for the entire family. Then the camps start, and the grandparents are being taken away, the family starts to be split up. The family had been hiding where they could in bunkers or attics with secret compartments where the dogs couldn't find them. Even when people had protected them in their homes, the germans would raid it and he and his family would have to leave to find another safe place. But as things became worse he set a plan to escape to Hungary, but his wife nervous as ever, felt they didn't need to leave because they had a safe house. And eventually the police figured out he was hiding his gold watch in the bottom of shoe polish and arrested him, sending him to a camp. The second volume continued on with the son going to visit his father again, but this time in the summer home. The father assumed his son and girlfriend would stay for the entire summer. And then the father continues his story of the camps, how at first he had complained the shoes were too big, and he got hit. But he was thankful that the showers were not gas showers, it was another day to try and live. He began to lose hope in life until a priest had explained the numbers of his arm each a had meaning, bringing life back into him. One of the officers was interested in learning english and kept him to the side while feeding him a feast of food. And through his connections he was able to help friends with getting items such as belts or shoes. During his time in the camps he did various other jobs that benefitted both hims and his wife, when the germans needed something fixed or done. But eventually he lost his jobs, and had to begin help with building the gas chambers. As the war came to the end the people from the camps were taken to woods or other random places and let nature take its toll, or even some soldiers would shoot them on the spot.
The comic is very fluid in its design and storytelling, but on a more personal level it was difficult. I have heard too many personal stories from my own family members when they're parents and grandparents were in the camps and trying to fend for their lives. But the story does give you a deep sense of sadness by the way the story cuts back and forth to the son and father discussing little things going on in the daily life and how the father would rather not tell something so sad for a book, but does it anyway for his son.