Maus: A Survivor's Tale Memory and the Past Quotes

It is a little extreme of Art to call Vladek a “murderer” for destroying his mother’s notebooks, but you can kind of see why. If memories are one crucial way for Holocaust survivors to preserve the lives of those who perished, Vladek has destroyed Anja’s memories, and thus she dies a second death.

Vladek provides important testimony here; as a tin worker, he was one of the workers who took apart the gas chambers and thus has an intimate knowledge of how the gas chambers worked.

Photographs provide another instance where the novel breaks with its animal metaphor. In this case, Spiegelman recreates the photographs using animal figures. But see Quote #10 below.