The same year, he edited a pornographic, psychedelic book of quotations, and dedicated it to his mother. The publishers of the German edition had to convince the German culture ministry of the work's serious intent to have the swastika appear on the cover, per laws prohibiting the display of Nazi symbolism. Maus was one of the first books in graphic novel format to receive significant academic attention in the English-speaking world. He is amazed and overjoyed when — after the end of the war and the liberation of surviving Jewish prisoners, when nearly everyone they know has been killed — they are reunited in Sosnowiec. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits.

Setting: Poland and Germany (1930s and 40s); Rego Park, Queens (1970s and 80s); Catskill Mountains (1979); New York City (1987). Spiegelman planned to draw Maus in such a manner, but after initial sketches he decided to use a pared-down style, one little removed from his pencil sketches, which he found more direct and immediate. This was real and I can't even explain how this affected me because it was the most emotional thing I've ever read. He is stubbornly self-reliant but cannot take care of himself due to heart, diabetic, and vision problems.During his youth his mother occasionally talked about Auschwitz, but his father did not want him to know about it. Let´s say removing statues and street names of mass murderers in the US, just imagine this in Germany with nazi leaders and the swastika instead of slave trading warmongerers and the confederate flag. C. Harvey argued that Spiegelman's animal metaphor threatened "to erode [ Maus 's] moral underpinnings", [183] and played "directly into [the Nazis'] racist vision". During one of Art's visits, he finds that a friend of Mala's has sent the couple one of the underground comix magazines Art contributed to.

When the Nazis invade Poland, Vladek reluctantly fights on the frontlines before facing capture and internment in a POW camp that purposely places Jewish prisoners in squalid conditions. When the Nazis arrive and steal the Jewish-owned businesses and factories, Vladek is drafted and quickly becomes a prisoner of war. Upon release, Vladek sneaks back into German-controlled territory to reunite with Anja and her family.A difficult and sad future lies ahead for them, but Vladek ends his story in a moment of triumph, as they embrace for the first time after months of separation. Though it brings back painful memories, Vladek admits that dealing with the issue in such a way was for the best. This literalization of the genocidal stereotypes that drove the Nazis to their Final Solution may risk reinforcing racist labels, [91] but Spiegelman uses the idea to create anonymity for the characters. After initial resistance from Anja, they send Richieu into hiding with her relatives; sadly, Anja’s sister poisons herself and Richieu when soldiers clear out their ghetto. Sometimes Jews and the Jewish councils are shown complying with the occupiers; some trick other Jews into capture, while others act as police for the Nazis.

One may dream, though: had he been successful, he might have had a different fate, and, as a result, Europe’s history might have taken some other shape… Sixty years later, on another continent, the young Art Spiegelman applied to the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and passed the exam. He shows little insight into his own racist comments about others in comparison to his treatment during the Holocaust. Though Vladek has lost his parents and most of his siblings by this time, Anja still has her parents and her nephew, Lolek. Spiegelman shows numerous instances of Poles who risked themselves to aid Jews, and also shows antisemitism as being rife among them. While these children have not had their parents' experiences, they grow up with their parents' memories—the memory of another's memory—until the stories become so powerful that for these children they become memories in their own right.

During the war, Vladek and Anja sent him away to live with an aunt, somewhere they believed he would be safer than he was with them. In making people of each ethnicity look alike, Spiegelman hoped to show the absurdity of dividing people along such lines. Spiegelman wanted to do a strip about racism, and at first considered focusing on African Americans, [48] with cats as Ku Klux Klan members chasing African-American mice.