A real and horrifying look in the Holocaust and Auschwitz... A book that will haunt you. I feel this book should be read, so something so horrific never happens again, a reminder of the horrors done to innocent people.
Potent and filled with symbolism, the analogy of the Jews being mice, and the Germans as cats was horrifying in itself, and greatly fitting. ( )

This follow-up to the original "Maus" was also exceptional. It's fascinating how hand-drawn 'comic-book' illustrations and associated dialogue and text can present such an engaging reading experience. ( )

Based on the life of Art Spiegelman's father who was a concentration camp survivor. Art Spiegelman depicts himself interviewing his father from a period of 1980 to 1991. All that his father tells him about life as a Jew in the concentration camps, life after the ordeal, and even his father's current mental state (until his death) is depicted in the book.

What strikes you first about Maus is the cover. You wonder, why "Maus"? You open the book and you see the significance of the word. Spiegelman uses his artistic license to depict all the humans in his story as anthropomorphs. All the Jews (such as Spiegelman) are depicted as mice (maus = mouse in German), the Germans fittingly are drawn as cats. Poles are pigs, Americans are dogs. So there is never any confusion in your head about what which citizen you are seeing. The story brilliantly moves between two time-frames, the present and the WW II time. The horrors are almost faithfully depicted. In fact, there is one panel shown where a German soldier is shown throwing a Jewish child against a wall to stop its crying, and I can't get that image out of my head. Spiegelman also shows many of the negative traits of his father, and wonders in one of the panels if he wasn't stereotyping Jews by showing his father to be a stingy opportunist. You can feel his inner conflicts as he tried to show his father's life without being demeaning.

Maus was initially published in two parts, but a combined version of the two books is available as "The Complete Maus". I liked Maus I much better than Maus II, but both are excellent. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize (special citation). If you read it, you'll know that it was a deserved win.

Rating for Maus II: 4/5


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Join me on the Facebook group, "Readers Forever!", for more reviews and other book-related discussions and fun. ( )

Summary: Volume 2 of a graphic novel on surviving Auschwitz, the story of Art Spiegelman’s parents and his struggle to care for his father.

At the end of Maus I Vladek and Anja Spiegelman arrive at the gates of Auschwitz. Maus II tells the story of their survival. It came down to currying the favor of one’s captors. Vladek gets preference for teaching a Polish guard English. He works as a tinsmith and a shoemaker, and is able to smuggle food to Anja. It comes down to a game of calories in a regime of slow starvation. The weak or sick are “selected” and sent to the ovens.

Vladek sees the ovens, which are described and rendered. His detail tears them down for transport to Germany as the Russians approach. He describes the terrible conditions of the transports, stuffed into cars, left on sidings for starvation and typhus to take them. Vladek and Anja are separated, liberated, eventually reunited and they find their way to America. Art is born. As we learned in the first volume, Anja took her life in 1968, never free of the Holocaust nightmares.

Things have worsened for Vladek. At the beginning of the Maus II, Mala, Vladek’s second wife leaves him for Florida. Alone at his summer bungalow and in fragile health, he calls Art and Francoise for help. They come for a weekend and he tries to talk them into staying for the summer. They encounter the fussiness that drove Mala crazy. And his neighbors, who tried to help, expect the young couple to step in. Later, Vladek goes to Florida and he and Mala re-unite. Then his heart condition worsens and Art brings him back to New York, where he eventually dies.

But Vladek’s death isn’t the end of suffering. Because Vladek had inflicted his pain, the struggle against survivor’s guilt, on Art, Art could never live up to his expectations. Now a success, he feels bad to prove his father wrong. Through recounting the conversations with his psychiatrist, also a survivor, Spiegelman portrays the intergenerational trauma Holocaust families experienced.

Through the graphic format, we experience the prisoners struggle to survive. While their bodies weaken, they hope for liberation–that they will live just long enough. Meanwhile, friends go to the ovens. And the pall and the smell hangs over them. In the re-telling, we witness a father and son trying to make sense of their shared pain to each other. Through rendering this story, Spiegelman bears witness graphically to the horrors of the Holocaust, the resilient courage of the survivors, and their enduring pain and sadness. ( )

This is the second book that Art Spiegelman wrote. It follows the story of the first one where Art's father, Vladek, recounts his experience in the holocaust. The second book goes through more of how Vladek survived in Auschwitz. The story also builds on Art's relationship with his father and relating a lot of the things he does to surviving the holocaust. I would use this book in a high school classroom because it has more language and more mature themes than the first book. (135 pages).

The 1st volume of the story of Polish Jew Vladek Spiegelman took him right up to the gates of Auschwitz. In this second volume, Vladek and his wife survive the horrors of two of the deadliest camps the Nazis ran, but at what cost? As seen in their lives after the war, as well as in the life and psyche of their son, coming out alive at the end of the Holocaust was just the first battle (though granted, a very, very difficult battle).

The previous book was rough enough in some ways, but this one is like a gut punch. The images portrayed of Vladek and those around him, the death and torture, can be difficult to handle. Add to that the depression that Art Spiegelman himself goes through as he works on putting his father's story on paper, and it is not a book to be taken lightly. Amidst the terror, I am still fascinated to read about Vladek's ingenuity, the tricks he used to stay alive. Sometimes it was pure luck, but often it was intelligence and quick thinking.

The emotions were heavy when the separated Vladek and Anja manage to even simply hear word that each other is alive. That hit me hard, thinking about my husband and me being in a similar situation. When I finished the book, I was left with a feeling of heaviness that was hard to shake. There's just no way to be able to imagine a fraction of what those involved in the Holocaust went through, living easy lives as we are. I think it's important for us to never forget what humanity is capable of, lest we begin to believe something like this could never happen again. I would recommend this to be read by anyone interested in this part of history, even if you don't normally read graphic novels. I don't either, but these books have captivated me for years. ( )

Amazing books. No other word for it. Painful to read with the difficult relationship between father (Holocaust survivor) and son (writer) that you feel yourself flinching and sometimes turning away from the page. The calm almost flat description of the horrors of the Holocaust that the father relays make them feel even more awful. These acts of brutality were simply every day events that had to be endured and gotten through.

Breathtaking. ( )

This book is appropriate for 5th grade. It's about a rat's time in the Auschwitz concentration camp. This book is heavy, so I wouldn't have it available for students younger than 5th grade because it is about the concentration camps and that can be really dark and sensitive for kids. I don't know that I would have it in my classroom for elementary students. ( )

Continuing the story from Maus I, Art Spiegelman relates his father's experiences in several concentration camps and what happened to the survivors at the end of the war. This book is darker and more 'graphicly' depicts the deplorable conditions suffered by Jews and other groups the Nazi's imprisoned. The graphic comic also shows his interactions with a parent that is battling multiple illnesses and habits held over from his time in the camps.
Instead of trying to ban these books, I think they should be required reading for everyone. ( )

This was a good second volume, though it was more about the present than the past (both the present of the characters, and the emotional rollercoaster the author hit after publishing the first one, which got a bit dicey and uncomfortable at times). I did not feel this volume packed as much punch, nor had much of anything in culminating or having any sort of ending, either in the past or the present. It just abruptly ended, which felt entirely anthithesis of the whole story about how nothing does end. ( )

Once again, we see the relationship between Art Sjpiegelman and his father who never leaves his struggles behind. His father can't let anything go to waste because he couldn't as a Jew during WWII, which annoys Art. Families are difficult, and Art is honest in his portrayal of their strained relationship. He finishes telling his father's story and goes to his father's death. ( )

In this second half of Maus, Artie shares with us all of his reservations about what he is creating and what it costs him. It's little wonder, as the first volume was only the preliminaries of the story. Here is where he had to detail the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and all of its inner workings. He depicts his father as telling about it matter-of-factly, in an almost off-hand and distracted manner. The lasting effects on his father show through in other ways; his high-strung reactions to the most minor wastefulness, and his ingrained miserliness. Artie comments that not all survivors came out like that, but perhaps those were the very traits that helped his father survive and could consequently never be shaken off or balanced.

There are elements in this story that I hadn't heard in other survivor tellings, equaling anything else for their horror. I was still struck with the appropriate horror impression, but I had to pause and consider them in the abstract. In this respect the graphic novel format put too much distance between me and what I was reading, but that is probably just me. One thing I do think missing from Maus is the context. These father-son discussions are between two Jews who don't need to explain the Holocaust to one another, but a non-Jewish reader can't get the full background from it of Hitler's pogrom and 'final solution'. It misses addressing the "why". On the other hand ... is there actually any good answer to that question? ( )

In this profound, moving, horrifying work of graphic non-fiction, artist Art Spiegelman's father Vladek survives the Holocaust only to end up as a cranky old man (or mouse) in the Catskills. His son prods Vladek to remember what would rather not remember (but, of course, he cannot forget).

This book is essential reading for understanding the Holocaust and its aftermath. ( )

As of 2022 a "banned" book. A very important contribution to holicaust surviver's literature. The comic format appealed to me then for sure. The story itself is gripping. Read both 1 and 2. ( )

La mejor historieta de la historia! No puede ser mejor ( )

It's hard to understand how horrible the holocaust was. The atrocities that were carried out by Nazi Germany are nearly indescribable because they were so inhuman. I don't think I will get that image of the mice burning alive, screaming in pain out of my head. ( )

Goodreads Review:
Acclaimed as a quiet triumph and a brutally moving work of art, the first volume of Art Spieglman's Maus introduced readers to Vladek Spiegleman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiararity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive.

This second volume, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. Maus ties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. At every level this is the ultimate survivor's tale - and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.

https://withfreedomandbooks.blogspot.com/2022/03/maus-i-ii-by-art-spiegelman.htm... ( )

In case anyone doesn’t know, this is (part II of) a graphic novel/memoir of the author’s Jewish father during WWII. The novel skips between the author interviewing his father in order to write the book and back to WWII. Jews are depicted as mice, Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs.

This is actually a reread (originally read 13 years ago), though it looks like the first time around, I read “The Complete Maus”. I read Part I last week; I do have them as separate parts this time, so I am recording them separately.

My review isn’t too much different from my review for Part I last week. I think I liked this better this second time around; I feel like I was paying better attention. Although the current day story in Part II didn’t focus as much on Art’s father and his 2nd wife, but there was still plenty happening in the “current” day with Art, his wife, and his father. We had a few more nationalities in part II, all drawn with/represented by different types of animals. This one also included Art drawing himself dealing with the success of part I’s publication and trying to write/draw part II. This one also had the end of WWII with Art’s father getting out of Auschwitz and meeting up later with Art’s mother. A very good book, and a different way to get the message out about what happened during the Holocaust. ( )

I gave the first in this series a low rating because it just simply ended with no closure on any part of the story and for its abrupt end. This one, explains why the author chose to depict this heady subject using a graphic novel platform and touches on how he was worried about using this method to communicate such a horrible nightmare that was World War II and the persecution and murder of millions of Jews. I feel like the two volumes should have remained as one; but having read both now, I have to say Spiegelman did a great job. From his story, we learn the war never ended for survivors of the Holocaust. Instead, it impacted their daily lives, not just in survivor guilt, but in physical health and psyches that were terribly damaged where one could find no happiness. Compared to the survivors, our people today are very soft. ( )

Together with the much-acclaimed first volume of Spiegelman's Maus (1987—not reviewed), this unusual Holocaust tale will forever alter the way serious readers think of graphic narratives (i.e., comic books). For his unforgettable combination of words and pictures, Spiegelman draws from high and low culture, and blends autobiography with the story of his father's survival of the concentration camps. In funny-book fashion, the all-too-real characters here have the heads of animals—the Jews are mice, the Nazis are rats, and the Poles are pigs—a stark Orwellian metaphor for dehumanized relations during WW II. Much of Spiegelman's narrative concerns his own struggle to coax his difficult father into remembering a past he'd rather forget. What emerges in father Vladek's tale is a study in survival; he makes it through by luck, randomness, and cleverness. Physically strong, he bluffs his way through the camps as a tinsmith and a shoemaker, and also exploits his ability with languages. Every day in Auschwitz, and later in Dachau, demands new bribes and masterly bartering. All of this helps explain Vladek's art of survival in the present: his cheap, miserly behavior; his disappointment over Spiegelman's marriage to a non-Jew; his constant criticism of his own second wife and his son; and even his inexcusable racism. Haunted by the brother who died in the camps, Spiegelman (born in postwar Sweden) also mourns his mother, who survived only to commit suicide in the late 60's. Within the time span of the writing of Maus (1978-91), Vladek died, and Spiegelman now must sort out his complex feelings as he reflects on the success of the first volume—a success built on the tragedy of the Holocaust. With all his doubts, Spiegelman pushes on, realizing that his book deserves a place in the ongoing struggle between memory and forgetting. Full of hard-earned humor and pathos, Maus (I and II) takes your breath away with its stunning visual style, reminding us that while we can never forget the Holocaust, we may need new ways to remember.

Together with the much-acclaimed first volume of Spiegelman's Maus (1987—not reviewed), this unusual Holocaust tale will forever alter the way serious readers think of graphic narratives (i.e., comic books). For his unforgettable combination of words and pictures, Spiegelman draws from high and low culture, and blends autobiography with the story of his father's survival of the concentration camps. In funny-book fashion, the all-too-real characters here have the heads of animals—the Jews are mice, the Nazis are rats, and the Poles are pigs—a stark Orwellian metaphor for dehumanized relations during WW II. Much of Spiegelman's narrative concerns his own struggle to coax his difficult father into remembering a past he'd rather forget. What emerges in father Vladek's tale is a study in survival; he makes it through by luck, randomness, and cleverness. Physically strong, he bluffs his way through the camps as a tinsmith and a shoemaker, and also exploits his ability with languages. Every day in Auschwitz, and later in Dachau, demands new bribes and masterly bartering. All of this helps explain Vladek's art of survival in the present: his cheap, miserly behavior; his disappointment over Spiegelman's marriage to a non-Jew; his constant criticism of his own second wife and his son; and even his inexcusable racism. Haunted by the brother who died in the camps, Spiegelman (born in postwar Sweden) also mourns his mother, who survived only to commit suicide in the late 60's. Within the time span of the writing of Maus (1978-91), Vladek died, and Spiegelman now must sort out his complex feelings as he reflects on the success of the first volume—a success built on the tragedy of the Holocaust. With all his doubts, Spiegelman pushes on, realizing that his book deserves a place in the ongoing struggle between memory and forgetting. Full of hard-earned humor and pathos, Maus (I and II) takes your breath away with its stunning visual style, reminding us that while we can never forget the Holocaust, we may need new ways to remember.

Consider this review to be about the entire work as opposed to specifically Maus II.

Maus isn't a holocaust story. It's a Jewish story. It's about a Jew in the Holocaust. It's about Jewish fathers and sons. It's bleak, where the universal good in humanity that we preach to is nonexistent. There are villains and no heroes. There's no justice to be found. Very few stories have happy endings.

We can't insulate children or ourselves. The stories they would rather replace Maus with (such as Boy in the Striped Pajamas) have heroes. There's justice. There's romance. There's unlikely heroes. It insulates you from any personal responsibility or introspection.

Read Maus. Read it again. And again. Send it to students who want to but can't for one reason or another.

"Life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed. But it wasn't the best people who survived, nor did the best ones die. It was random!" ( )

Maus was compelling to read, and all the more so for being a graphic novel. I confess to having dismissed it early on due to the format, but then discovered Speigelman’s storytelling genius. His technique of pitting mice and cats against one another particularly impressed me; it’s a gentle way to highlight the gulf between polar opposite groups, to soften (a bit) the horror of what actually happened, and yet to still relate a faithful account of his father’s experience. Reading Maus (and Maus II) put Speigelman pretty high on my list(s). ( )

So sad, but so good. I'm ready to take another swing at a graphic novel. ( )