Quote 28
“The Germans didn’t want to leave anywhere a sign of all what they did. You heard about the gas, but I’m telling not rumors, but only what really I saw. For this I was an eyewitness.” (II.2.59)
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.
Quote 29
“But, below my closet I find these snapshots, some still from Poland.” (II.4.103)
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.
Quote 30
“I passed once a photo place what had a camp uniform – a new and clean one – to make souvenir photos.” (II.5.124)
Spiegelman actually includes this photograph in the book. It’s grimly funny: to take a picture in a camp uniform as a <em>souvenir</em>? Where does he think he is, Disneyland? The photograph also brings up the question of realism again. We usually view photographs as the most realistic of mediums, but here we have a photograph that is clearly staged.