Why does vladek call art richieu
He insists that he means them no harm, and is only out looking for food. The same day, the man comes back with Nazi soldiers, who arrest the family and take them to a detention center to await transport to Auschwitz. There is no moral code to unite the people of Srodula, and fundamental beliefs about the good or right thing to do in any given situation no longer make sense as foundations for decision-making.
Vladek has two cousins working for the Germans: Jakov , who does manual labor, and Haskel , who is the chief of the Jewish police in Srodula. While awaiting transport to Auschwitz, Vladek spots Jakov and offers to pay him for help escaping the ghetto.
It also implies that the Zylberberg family was exceptional in their loyalty to one another — that few other families were able to maintain such strong multigenerational bonds.
Jakov brings Haskel to the detention center. Vladek bribes Haskel with a diamond ring. Haskel says he can get Vladek, Anja , and Lolek out of the ghetto, but that it will be too conspicuous if he tries to sneak out the elderly Mr. Zylberberg is desperate to escape, and gives all his valuables to Vladek to use as bribes. Haskel takes the bribes, and begins to sneak the family, one by one, out of the detention center. The day the vans arrive to take the detained to Auschwitz, Vladek and Anja see Mr.
Zylberberg at the window, crying. All his wealth has not been able to save his life. The Zylberbergs go directly to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Unlike Vladek, whose father disappears without warning amid the stadium crowds, Anja is forced to watch from afar as her own parents are deported to Auschwitz and their deaths.
The image of Mr. Zylberberg crying at the window captures the disempowerment of the entire family — he knows exactly what lies ahead, is in a position to communicate his need for help, and is seen by people who want nothing more than to save him, but the barrier between the inside and outside is still impenetrable.
Information, connections, and wealth cannot keep him safe. Vladek pauses in his story to pick up a piece of wire from the ground near a trash can.
He goes on with his story: after Haskel smuggles them out of the detention center, he takes them to a shoe shop where his brother, Miloch , is working. Haskel was a crook, Vladek tells Artie, but Miloch was a good man. The two of them had another brother, Pesach , who was a crook like Haskel — a member of the Jewish police. Vladek begins to work in the shop with Miloch, repairing German boots. Though foundational morality has fallen by the wayside, Vladek is still willing and able to identify people in moral terms —he knows that Haskel is a crook and Miloch is a good man, and he makes such judgments even after acknowledging the moral chaos of the times.
He carries a nitroglycerin pill in his pocket, and swallows it immediately to help regulate his heartbeat. He sits on a stoop to catch his breath, and tells Artie that Miloch survived the war and moved to Australia with his wife.
He reveals that Miloch died only recently, after years of heart trouble, when he was caught during a seizure without his nitroglycerin pills. People die because of bad luck and small mistakes —the same end waits for all of us, and those who survived the worst years of the war are just as vulnerable as anyone else.
Vladek and Artie resume walking. Vladek describes the last months of the Germans are clearing out Srodula, and sending the few remaining Jews to Auschwitz in weekly transports. Miloch and Pesach build a bunker in the shoe shop Haskel has made escape plans of his own and invite Vladek, Anja , and Lolek to hide with them when the time comes. Lolek refuses to hide.
He is fifteen years old, and is tired of living in bunkers. His skills as an electrician, he believes, will make him useful to the Nazis and help him survive wherever he goes. Anja weeps and begs him to reconsider, but Lolek refuses to enter the bunker. Soon after, he is taken to Auschwitz. Like his Aunt Tosha, Lolek is committed to dictating the terms of his own life. With Lolek gone, Anja becomes hysterical. Anja tells Vladek she wants to die, but Vladek begs her to keep struggling for life.
He needs her, he says — together, they will survive. Here Vladek reveals his own priorities: he wants to survive, no matter how hard he has to fight to do so. His love for Anja gives him something to live for, but there is also a sense that Vladek believes in life and in a future after the war. He will keep struggling to live, no matter what.
Anja and Vladek hide in the bunker with several others. There is almost no food, and everyone is on the brink of starvation. Several of those hiding in the bunker try to escape by bribing the guards to look the other way while they walk out of the ghetto; the guards take their bribes, but shoot them as soon as they hand over the money. One man, Avram , says he will not leave the bunker until Vladek does —Vladek has good judgment, and Avram trusts that he will not leave the bunker until it is safe.
Finally, after almost everyone in Srodula has been killed or deported, the Germans leave and the handful of people hiding in the bunker walk out of the ghetto. They part ways, all going in different directions. Vladek and Anja have nowhere to go, so they walk toward Sosnowiec. Vladek has learned to work within a new moral code, and now knows better than to trust the guards. Skip to content The reality of people dying and suffering is never amusing. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:.
Email required Address never made public. Name required. Next Next post: Next Post. Follow Following. After hearing about smugglers who help Jews escape to Hungary, Vladek decides to find out more. He runs into a family that he used to know, and their nephew Abraham announces that he will attempt to travel with the smugglers first, then send a letter to his family if he arrives safely.
While waiting to hear from Abraham, Vladek goes to visit his cousin Miloch, who is hiding in a trash pit. Abraham sends a letter in Yiddish to his family, alerting them to his safe arrival in Hungary.
Seeing this, Vladek convinces Anja to join him in leaving with the smugglers. Enraged, Artie calls his father a murderer. When he calls Vladek, Artie learns that he fabricated the heart attack, and is really calling because Mala withdrew money from their joint account and left. Artie recalls a photo of Richieu that he often looked at as a child, wondering if he would ever live up to all that Richieu might have been.
Early the next morning, Vladek wakes them up, ranting about Mala stealing his money, his car. He starts an argument about how many wooden matches Artie is using, so Artie goes outside. Vladek continues his story, starting with his arrival in Auschwitz. The incoming Jews are stripped of their clothing and possessions and given ill-fitting prison uniforms and shoes to wear. Their heads are shaved, and their forearms are tattooed with identification numbers.
Vladek sees Abraham, who reveals that he was forced to write his earlier letter. He also sees the Polish smugglers who betrayed him and Anja; the Gestapo arrested them when they were no longer of value. A kapo a Polish prisoner assigned to supervise other prisoners forces everyone in the barracks to do grueling exercises all day, and some prisoners die of exhaustion.
When one of the kapos asks which of the prisoners knows both Polish and English, Vladek volunteers to give the man private English lessons. In return, the kapo tells Vladek that when the S. Vladek does as he is told and remains safe, along with Mandelbaum. He explains that he wants to know English in case the Allies win the war. After the lesson, the kapo lets Vladek choose better clothes and leather shoes from the storeroom, as well as a separate set of shoes, a spoon, and a belt for Mandelbaum.
Eventually, Mandlebaum is chosen for work detail, and Vladek never sees him again. The kapo continues to keep Vladek safe and adds him to the crew that fixes roofs in the camp. Back in the present, Vladek wraps his story for the time being, and leads Artie to a hotel patio, avoiding the hotel security. Vladek tells Artie that he often sneaks onto the hotel for dancing lessons or games of bingo.
This chapter begins with Artie sitting behind a drafting table; he is illustrated as a human wearing a mouse mask. He states that Vladek died of heart failure in August of He then lists many significant dates in no apparent order:. September , the first part of Maus was published and was extremely successful. He grows smaller with each panel, eventually turning into a small child.
After the others leave, the child version of Artie goes to his psychiatrist, Pavel, who is a Czech Jew and an Auschwitz survivor. Pictured as a young child, Artie sits and talks to his psychiatrist, Pavel, about Vladek. He expresses his feeling that no matter how successful he is, everything he does seems insignificant compared to surviving Auschwitz. When Artie asks if Pavel feels any guilt for surviving Auschwitz, Pavel says that he only feels sadness.
Pavel tells him what tools to draw in the tin shop, and Artie leaves. In the next scene, an adult Artie sits at his drafting table and listens to a conversation he recorded with his father when they were in the Catskills. As his father rants about Mala on the tape, Artie shrinks to the child version of himself again. He recalls the manager of the tin shop, a Russian Jew named Yidl.
As a communist, Yidl dislikes Vladek and calls him a capitalist, because Vladek once owned factories. One of the other tin workers tells Vladek that Yidl likes presents, so Vladek trades clothes for food and brings it to Yidl to gain favor.
Vladek notes that Yidl was greedy, always taking as much food as he could. Since there was very little food for the normal prisoners, many of them starved. Vladek recalls meeting Mancie, a female prisoner from Birkenau who oversaw a work crew of other women.
He tells her about Anja, and Mancie later reports that while Anja is struggling mentally and physically, she is alive and is relieved to hear from Vladek. When the S. Vladek sees Anja several times at Birkenau, but only in passing. He tells her to keep food for herself and not share with her friends. When he is caught talking to Anja on his way to fix a roof, a guard grabs Vladek and beats him brutally. Vladek is sent to the camp hospital, which serves only to condemn weak and injured prisoners to death.
Vladek says that he was twice inspected by Dr. Mengele but was passed over for dreaded selection and returned to his barracks. As Yidl expects constant gifts, Vladek arranges to be a shoemaker. He works in a small room, away from the main shoe shop. When asked to repair an S. The officer is so pleased that he gives Vladek a whole sausage. Vladek discovers that new buildings are being built to house women from Birkenau.
Vladek asks the kapo he knows if it would be possible to have Anja transferred, but the kapo tells him it would cost a fortune in bribes. Vladek finds out that the bribe would cost cigarettes and a bottle of vodka which is worth cigarettes. Vladek eventually saves enough to pay the bribe, and Anja is transferred to his camp and given a work assignment in a munitions shop. While they can only see each other briefly and through an electric fence, they are relieved to be near one another.
As he loses more and more weight, he begins to worry that he will be chosen for the gas chamber. Vladek is eventually reassigned to the tin shop. As the Russians begin to invade Poland, Vladek and others are ordered to dismantle the gas chambers; the Nazis hope to rebuild them in Germany and conceal what they had done in Auschwitz.
While the prisoners are dismantling the gas chambers, Vladek meets a man who carries corpses from the gas chamber to the ovens, and the man tells Vladek about all of the terrible things he has seen. Vladek explains that not only were all of the prisoners starving and terrified, but the Nazis would murder prisoners for every rebellious one, effectively destroying their will to resist. Vladek says that ever since the war, he hates to waste food. Artie sarcastically tells him to keep the food in case Hitler ever comes back.
After he apologizes, they drive to the grocery store, and Artie mentions that he read about a revolt in Auschwitz where prisoners who worked in the gas chamber killed three S.
Vladek says that the prisoners were later hanged, along with anyone who helped them. Vladek continues his story.
The prisoners hear loud explosions when the front is within twenty-five miles of Auschwitz, but before the camp is liberated, the guards force them to march all night into Germany. Along the way, many prisoners die of exhaustion or are shot by the guards. After reaching the camp Gross-Rosen, prisoners are packed into cattle cars so tightly that many suffocate, and many others starve.
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