The Problems with Spiegelman’s MAUS:
Why MAUS Should Not Be Taught in High Schools
or Elementary Schools
Part # 3 Why is the depiction of Poles in MAUS
objectionable from a historical perspective?
MAUS
promotes negative stereotypes in portraying Poles and contains serious historical
misrepresentations regarding their role in the context of the Second World War.
These two phenomena go hand in hand, one buttressing the other. They are ubiquitous.
Among the many misrepresentations regarding Poles (which are addressed
in more depth later) the following stand out:
Ordinary Poles are portrayed as Nazi
sympathizers.
Poles are shown as occupying
virtually all positions of brutal kapos in Nazi
camps.
There is no mention that Poles faced
the death penalty for helping Jews in
any way. Instead, Polish helpers are
portrayed as greedy and deceitful.
There is no mention that the Germans
also relied on Jewish policemen and
agents to hunt down Jews who escaped
from the ghetto. That role is
assigned exclusively to the Poles.
Anyone
who has carried out any serious research
on Auschwitz and the German occupation of this part of Poland, as Spiegelman
purports to have done, could not have failed to come across the existence of
many Jewish kapos, the fact that there was a death penalty for aiding Jews, and
the role of the Jewish police outside the ghettos. The treatment of these
matters can be contrasted with Spiegelman’s decision to challenge his father’s
recollection about far less significant matters such as the existence of a
prisoner orchestra in Auschwitz. However, he does not challenge his father’s
recollection on the make-up of the kapos and the risks Poles faced for helping
Jews. The failure to include such important information is a deliberate
narrative choice that seriously compromises the status of MAUS as non-fiction,
which is how the book is essentially passed off and wherein lies its supposed
didactic value for students.
NB. Nazi Germans posted warnings of death penalty (printed in German and Polish)
Please click on this link to see photo. http://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/german-poster-announces-death-penalty-for-aiding-jews
MAUS
relies on negative stereotypes to portray the Poles in an unfavourable light. Depicting
Poles as disgusting and brutal animals is eerily reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda
newspaper, Der Stürmer.Significantly, this point is usually omitted by reviewers
of MAUS, even though the image of fat, fascist pigs permeates MAUS and is all
too glaring to overlook. The fact that MAUS employs the same imagery of the Poles as
found in Nazi propaganda, where Poles were often referred to as “pigs,” could
perhaps be explained, provided teachers and teaching materials addressed this
matter squarely. The fact is they almost never do. (The handout, Ian Johnston’s
“On Spiegelman’s Maus I and II,” provided students in a Toronto high school,
does not mention this. Rather, it refers to the animals’ unexplained “symbolic
quality.”) But even pointing out such facts would not expose the depth of prejudice
and misinformation that the pig metaphor represents.
There is
certainly nothing sympathetic or cute about the pigs in MAUS. The predominant
portrayal of the Poles is undeniably negative. Except for the odd Pole who is
shown in a light that is not entirely unfavourable, Spiegelman does not humanize
the Polish “pigs.” He humanizes only his Jewish mice characters, while depicting
his Polish pigs essentially as racist stereotypes. By focusing on negative characters
like the camp kapos, Spiegelman implies that the Poles, who were also victims
of the Nazi regime, collaborated with their fascist enemies. Unfortunately, these
crude stereotypes are, for the most part, simply perverse history and would be
unacceptable in any other context.
NB. The Polish Underground was the largest Resistance movement of any Nazi-occupied European nation. Poles were not Nazi collaborators, since their mission was to sabotage Nazi German supply routes, trains, etc In fact, Polish insurgents managed to assassinate several high ranking Nazi German officers. I invite you to read one of my blog posts regarding Secret Polish Forces of WW2 Please click on this link
http://polishgreatness.blogspot.ca/2011/12/special-polish-forces-of-ww2-silent_11.html
Let us
consider the frames showing Poles, drawn as fat pigs, who greet each other with a
Nazi hand salute and say the words “Heil Hitler”. It would have been almost impossible
to find any Pole saluting Hitler to another Pole during the war. Yet these frames
strongly suggest that that is how ordinary Poles tried to convince one another
that they were genuine Poles. Polish pigs are also shown wearing uniforms with Nazi
insignia, even though the Poles did not and could not join collaborationist formations
like the SS. (This was unlike any other occupied European countries, which did
in fact produce large, voluntary, national SS formations in the service of the Nazis.
(11)
NB. Polish insurgents often wore a red-and-white armband, symbol of the Polish Flag, and the underground army, Armia Krajowa. Please click here to visit this important website
http://www.muzeum-ak.krakow.pl/english/index.php
Throughout,
the pigs are also shown as fat, whereas the mice are emaciated, even though the
Germans imposed near-starvation food rations on the Polish population. (In
1941, the food allotment for a Jew amounted to 253 calories, 669 calories for a
Pole, and 2,613 for a German.) Quite simply, this is a perversion of the
historical record. No amount of literary deconstruction of the animal metaphor
will erase this falsified portrayal of the Poles as alleged sympathizers and
beneficiaries of the Nazi regime.
The
depiction of Poles in Auschwitz is overwhelmingly that of cruel, greedy and
brutal kapos. All of the kapos in Auschwitz are drawn as pigs, from the moment
Vladek arrives at Auschwitz. (Polish kapos are shown as German “partners”
standing at the entrance to Auschwitz.) The Polish kapos are ubiquitous. They
appear in frame after frame after frame – dozens of them spread over 40 pages
of the book. There is a seemingly endless stream of pigs who are kapos. There
is even a brutal female pig kapo in Birkenau, even though the prisoners in that
camp were almost exclusively Jewish. There is just one exception to the kapo
profile in Auschwitz-Birkenau, namely, a female mouse kapo in Birkenau. But she
is actually kind to Vladek’s wife, Anja. It is not surprising, therefore, that
GradeSaver, a popular online student study guide provider, states a conclusion
that becomes rather apparent from Spiegelman’s portrayal of Poles: “A
‘kapo’ is a Polish supervisor at a concentration camp.” (12)
NB. A kapo is not a Polish supervisor at a concentration camp. The majority of kapos were German thugs and criminals, as well as Lithuanians, Ukrainians, quite a number of Jews; and among the Poles, most were Volksdeutscher.
The
impression MAUS seeks to convey is rather clear: Poles helped to run Auschwitz
for the Germans. They occupied strategic positions of power between the lowly
Jews and the Nazi overlords, and collaborated with the Germans in oppressing
the Jewish prisoners. This is patently false history. The kapos (prisoner
functionaries who were assigned various supervisory tasks) did not run the
camp, even on a day-to-day basis. There were plenty of “cat” personnel for that
purpose. Some 8,000 to 8,200 SS men and some 200 female guards – consisting of
Germans and Austrians – served in the garrison during the camp’s existence. (13)
NB. The fact is that there were not enough SS Nazi Germans to run the concentrations camps on a daily basis. They had to appoint Germans thugs and other nationalities to inflict their brand of sadism and torture on the prisoners.
MAUS’s
Polish kapos excel at mistreating Jews. Otherwise, Polish prisoners (pigs) are
almost invisible in MAUS, even though the Auschwitz concentration camp was originally
built for Poles and held mostly Polish (Christian) prisoners until 1943. In total,
some 150,000 Christian Poles were imprisoned in Auschwitz. (14)
NB. Many Jewish prisoners were appointed as kapos and inflicted the most brutal treatment on their fellow Jews, in many cases murdering them. The New York Times printed an article in 1987 about a Jewish man who was accused by Federal authorities of wartime atrocities against the Jewish people. Please click on the following link.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/26/nyregion/haunting-issues-surround-jewish-nazi-camp-overseer.html
Although half of the Polish prisoners
perished, mostly from malnutrition and disease, the Polish pigs in MAUS are
drawn as fat as ever, while the mice are shown as emaciated. Dachau, the first
Nazi concentration camp in Germany, was originally intended for political
prisoners. Later it held “asocials” (Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals) and
prisoners of various nationalities including Jews. In 1940, Dachau became
filled with Polish prisoners, who constituted the majority of the prisoner
population until the camp was liberated in 1945. Dachau was also the principal
camp for imprisoned Christian clergy from all over Europe. Of a total of 2,720
clergy imprisoned at Dachau, the overwhelming majority, 95%, were Catholic and
65% were Poles. About 90%
of the clergymen put to death in Dachau were Poles. A large number of Polish
priests were chosen for Nazi medical experiments.
Against this background alone, the association
of Poles with kapos is a travesty. This is
no mere coincidence or accident, because all of the kapos in Gross-Rosen and
Dachau are also drawn as pigs. Spiegelman carried out extensive research for MAUS,
which he clearly makes known so as to enhance the authenticity of his account.
Therefore, he could not have been unaware of the hundreds of Jewish testimonies
that describe the activities of Jewish kapos in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other
camps. Thus, it is fair to conclude that there is a deliberate cover-up of the existence,
and brutality, of Jewish kapos at the expense of Poles. This is racist. As the
historical record clearly shows, kapos cannot be associated with any one nationality.
Although there were some Polish kapos in Auschwitz and other camps,
the
suggestion that the kapo function was almost exclusively a Polish domain –repeatedly
reinforced in MAUS – is simply untrue. There were also many Jewish kapos, as
well as German kapos.
When
Vladek arrived in Auschwitz in 1944, the vast majority of new arrivals were
Jews from Hungary (MAUS alludes to this fact). There was, therefore, little use
for Polish kapos as they would be unable to communicate with the Hungarian
Jews. Most East European Jews, on the
other hand, had a common language, Yiddish, so – as Jewish testimonies show –
Jews became prominent and invaluable in the kapo function. Interestingly,
Marysia Winogron, a cousin of Vladek’s wife, who was in Auschwitz-Birkenau at
the same time as Vladek’s wife, recalls her physical tormentors as Czech Jews,
both kapos and block commanders, and adds, “I never got beaten by the Germans.”
(15)
The compilation, in Appendix 1, of representative Jewish accounts fully
substantiates these assertions. Numerous Jewish survivors attest to the cruelty
of many of the Jewish kapos they encountered in the camps featured in MAUS:
Auschwitz, Birkenau and Gross-Rosen. One Jewish testimony compares a Polish
kapo favourably to a Jewish kapo. Another accuses a Jewish kapo of targeting
Poles for abuse and sparing Jews. The accuracy of this historical analysis is
beyond question. However, it is a complex reality that Spiegelman’s MAUS
deliberately eschews and that its
student readers will never learn about. The book’s malicious portrayal of Poles
in Auschwitz is taken at face value by educators. There is no evidence that
this aspect of the book has ever been challenged in the instructional materials
or by any teacher in the classroom.
In this
context, one must ask the question whether any school board would approve the
use of a book, written from the perspective of a Polish prisoner of Auschwitz,
that suggested that all of the kapos were Jews, even if that was based on the
prisoner’s actual experiences. We believe that the answer to that question is
apparent. Such a book would be discredited. Even if Spiegelman’s father had
claimed that all of the kapos in Auschwitz were Poles, which we doubt (this was
likely the author’s own embellishment), he could have confronted his father on
this point in MAUS, if he had wanted to, in order to set the record straight.
Spiegelman chose to do just that with
regard to the prisoner orchestra that played in Auschwitz. (Vladek was unaware of it, but Art had read
about it in his research.) So Erin Einhorn, cited earlier, read Art Spiegelman
quite accurately when she points out that his treatment of the Poles is from a
skewed, ethno-nationalist perspective. Not only does MAUS fail to expose this
bias, the author perpetuates it. Yet the book is touted by educators as
breaking down stereotypes, thereby giving further legitimacy to those negative
stereotypes.
Again, no
amount of deconstruction of the text will expose, or erase from the students’
minds, this inaccurate and defamatory portrayal of ordinary Poles as Nazi sympathizers
or as kapos in Auschwitz. Moreover, none of the study materials we have been
directed to or have found address or correct these false impressions. None of
the students we have spoken to recall their teachers dealing with the perverse
portrayal of the Poles we have described. The limitations of literary analysis
are all too apparent when one is faced with a text that plays fast and loose with the
historical record. Those literary “tools” are no substitute for hard knowledge
of the facts when one is dealing with a book that is treated as non-fiction.
The
overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the Poles in Auschwitz pushed by MAUS is
an
affront to the memory of the camp’s 150,000 Polish Christian prisoners. One such
prisoner was Witold Pilecki, a member of the Polish underground, who volunteered
for an operation to get imprisoned at Auschwitz in order to gather intelligence.
Pilecki escaped from the camp in 1943, after nearly three years of imprisonment,
and filed detailed reports about conditions in the camp. How many students
have heard of Witold Pilecki?
NB. The story of Witold Pilecki is one of amazing courage and self-sacrifice and cannot be explained in short words. Please click on the following link to visit a special website in English for a detailed biography, documents and photos about Witold Pilecki.
http://en.pilecki.ipn.gov.pl/rpe/biography/8193,Rotamaster-Witold-Pilecki.html
Father
Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest, performed the unheard of deed of offering
his life up for a fellow prisoner, a Polish family man who was part of a group of
prisoners that were to be executed after a prisoner escaped. Sigmund Gerson,
then a 13-year-old Jewish boy, recollected that Father Kolbe was “like an angel to
me. Like a mother hen, he took me in his arms. He used to wipe away my tears.
... he gave away so much of his meager rations that to me it was a miracle he could
live.” Another Jewish survivor, Eddie Gastfriend, recalled warmly the scores of
Polish prisoner priests, who were subjected to particular forms of degradation
in the camp: “They wore no collars, but you knew they were priests by
their
manner and their attitude, especially toward Jews. They were so gentle, so
We are
not aware of any teaching materials or teachers that have directed students
studying
MAUS to books like Witold Pilecki’s report, The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond
Bravery (Los Angeles: Aquila Polonica, 2012) or Patricia Treece’s moving
biography
A Man for
Others: Maximilian Kolbe, Saint of Auschwitz (New York:Harper and Row, 1982).
Moreover, students are rarely , if ever, directed to the website of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum (Internet: http://en.auschwitz.org/m/),
which is the premier website and most authoritative source of information on
Auschwitz. Thus, the chances of the students actually learning about the true
narrative of the Poles in Auschwitz,
other than their alleged prominent role as kapos, is rather unlikely.
Furthermore,
given the level of the audience (ages 12 to 17), it is even more unlikely
that the teachers would be able to adequately explain all of these complex matters,
or had the time to do so, even if they were aware of them. After all, MAUS is not
being taught, from a critical perspective, in history classes. It is highly unlikely
that the vast majority of English teachers would themselves be aware of these
facts, as they are not specialists in history and the instructional aides do
not adequately
address these matters.
NB. There are many UK schools which invite Holocaust survivors into the classroom to tell their story to the students, and answer their questions. At Big Valley School in Alberta, they chose an alternative method, ie to use video conferencing as a way to bring the world "into the classroom". Through this medium the students were able to "visit" the Holocaust Memorial Center as well as speak with a Holocaust survivor (on video) This is an excellent idea that should be incorporated in all Canadian schools. (Source: http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/inviting-world-classroom-video-conferencing-big-valley )
There is
no reason to believe that the students would come to appreciate that the Poles
as pigs metaphor breaks down in any meaningful way. With few exceptions, the
pig people are simply not sympathetic characters. They are greedy and brutal
beasts. Literary analysis tools are of no assistance here. They would not
expose the serious historical misrepresentations we have described, just as they
would not expose the religious and cultural biases inherent in the pig
metaphor. Dr. Linda Kornasky, a professor of literature at Angelo
StateUniversity, makes this very point when she states:
Maus does not actually achieve
the deconstructive purposes that Spiegelman has claimed for it. In fact,
Spiegelman’s admissions, cited in petition, that he did actually intend to represent
inaccurate and hateful stereotypes are entirely true. He then simply has
employed the cloak of “postmodernism” to hide the true import of his
destructive portrayal of Poles.
We will
limit ourselves to two additional examples of Spiegelman’s treatment of the
historical
record. As noted earlier, MAUS makes no mention that the German invaders
imposed the death penalty on Poles for helping Jews in any way. This was not the
case in most other occupied countries, and was unheard of in Western Europe.
In occupied Poland, often entire families including grandparents, teenagers (like the
students), young children and infants in arms were killed for this “crime.” More than
1,000 Christian Poles were executed when discovered sheltering or helping
Jews. Poles – 6,400 as of January 1, 2013 –also constitute the largest group of
rescuers of Jews recognized by Yad Vashem,The Holocaust Martyrs’ an Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. A selection of rescue stories describing
the sacrifices and bravery of many Poles in the Sosnowiec area (where Vladek
resided) is found in Appendix 2. Portraying these Poles as pigs is, by the
standards of democratic values, simply unacceptable under any circumstances.
NB. The Polish Underground, and many Polish citizens risked their lives to save Jewish people. Unfortunately, many thousands of Polish people were executed along with the Jewish families they were hiding when the Gestapo discovered them. There is a very important website that you must visit, starting with this page,
please click here http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/statistics.asp
Most
Polish helpers, however, have not been recognized by Yad Vashem. According
to
historian Gunnar Paulsson,
The 27,000 Jews in hiding in
Warsaw relied on about 50–60,000 people who provided hiding-places and another
20–30,000 who provided other forms of help; on the other hand, blackmailers, police
agents, and other actively anti-Jewish elements numbered perhaps 2–3,000, each
striking at two or three victims a month. In other words, helpers outnumbered
hunters by about 20 or 30 to one. The active helpers of Jews thus made up seven
to nine per cent of the population of Warsaw; the Jews themselves, 2.7 per
cent; the hunters, perhaps 0.3 per cent; and the whole network—Jews, helpers
and hunters—constituted a secret city of at least 100,000: one tenth of the
people of Warsaw. (17)
The
Germans imposed near-starvation food rations on the Polish population. In 1941, the
food allotment for a Jew amounted to 253 calories, 669 calories for a Pole, and
2,613 for a German. The typical Polish family occupied one or two rooms in a
tenement house or cottage, without running water or a toilet. Thus, the vast majority of
Poles were in no position to provide long-term shelter to anyone.
István
Deák, a noted Columbia University historian, has eloquently made the following
compelling argument:
The
penalty for assisting or even trading with a Jew in German-occupied Poland was
death, a fact that makes all comparisons between wartime Polish-Jewish
relations and, say, Danish-Jewish relations blatantly unfair. Yet such
comparisons are made again and again in Western histories—and virtually always
to the detriment of the Poles, with scarce notice taken of the 50,000 to
100,000 Jews said to have been saved by the efforts of Poles to hide or
otherwise help them ... one must not ignore the crucial differences between
wartime conditions in Eastern and Western Europe. (18)
NB. The Polish Underground was highly organized and had a Directorate for Civil Action, courts and an elaborate code of ethics. Collaboration with the Nazis was punishable by death http://history.lsa.umich.edu/PSA/PSA%20Article%20Prize/Haska.pdf
Instead
of pointing out the lethal risks for Poles associated with the rescue of Jews,
MAUS
portrays Polish rescuers as greedy and deceitful. The truth is that they were
poor and
frightened. None of the three Poles (drawn as pigs) who assisted the
Spiegelman
family, namely, Mr. Łukowski, Mrs. Kawka, and Mrs. Motonowa
(actually
Mrs. Matoń) of Szopienice, betrayed them. They were just afraid to shelter
them any
longer. Similarly, the claim that the Polish smugglers who were to take
Vladek
and Anja to Hungary simply betrayed them does not stand up to closer
scrutiny,
though this is nowhere disclosed in MAUS.(19)
In his
incisive critique of MAUS (The Comics Journal,no. 135, April 1990), Harvey
Pekar
exposes this problem by the providing following illustration:
Fiore asks why, if Art meant to
portray Poles negatively, he shows them aiding his parents to hide from the
Germans. I answered that Art had to do this because it was an integral part of
his father’s story. So get this: Fiore asks why, if Art can distort the account
of his relationship with his father, he can’t ignore or distort the fact that
some Poles risked their lives for Jews during the Second World War. Here’s the
answer: Art quotes his father as saying he’d met a Polish woman, Mrs. Motonowa,
selling food in the black market. Vladek pays her for a loaf of bread. She
tells him she doesn’t have change. He says, “It’s OK ... keep it for your
little boy.” Art’s implication is that Mrs. Motonowa lied here about not having
change so she could keep it.
Then Mrs. Motonowa offers to let
Vladek stay at her farmhouse. So Vladek and his wife move there. At this point
Art interrupts his father’s narrative to cynically remark, “You had to pay Mrs.
Motonowa to keep you, right?” Vladek answers with some irritation, “Of course I
paid ... and well I paid ... what do you think? Someone will risk their life
for nothing ... I also paid for the food what she gave to us from her smuggling
business. But one time I missed a few coins to the bread.”
When Vladek does this Mrs.Motonowa comes back in the evening without bread.
Vladek comments, “Always she got bread, so I didn’t believe ... But still, she
was a good woman.”
What’s happening here is that Art is showing a
poor Polish woman hiding his parents, but he’s strongly implying that she’s
doing it for money alone, which is consistent with her pig image. To kill two
birds with one stone, he pictures his father accepting her “mercenary” values.
(“Of course I paid... Someone will risk their life for nothing?”) Maybe Art expects
Mrs. Motonowa to turn down Vladek’s money, to support him and his wife for
free, even though Vladek can pay for his expenses. Vladek justifies paying Mrs.
Motonowa for risking her life to save his, but Art implies she’s taking
unreasonable advantage of his father. This
may illustrate that Art is even cheaper and more selfish than Vladek, maybe
almost as cheap as I am!
Actually, there were Poles of
high moral character who saved Jews without expecting to be paid for it. But
Artie portrays all Poles as pigs.
Given the
approach validated by the author, there is no room for students to become aware
– and this is something that should be impressed on them, had MAUS not missed
yet another opportunity to rise above its biases – that sacrificing one’s life
is not a simple act of kindness. No one has the right to demand of others that
they should help someone if it means laying down their lives. Many honest Jewish
survivors who were rescued by Poles have stated that they do not know if they
would have been able to rescue Poles under such circumstances. Some have said
emphatically that they would not have undertaken such a risk.
“I do not accuse anyone that did
not hide or help a Jew. We cannot demand from others to sacrifice their lives.
One has no right to demand such risks.”(20)
“Everyone who states the view
that helping Jews was during those times a reality, a duty and nothing more
should think long and hard how he himself would behave in that situation. I
admit that that I am not sure that I could summon up enough courage in the
conditions of raging Nazi terror.” (21)
One Polish Jew who often asked
this question of Jewish survivors recalled: “The answer was always the same and
it is mine too. I do not know if I would have endangered my life to save a
Christian.” (22)
“I am not at all sure that I
would give a bowl of food to a Pole if it could mean death for me and my
daughter,” a Jewish woman admitted candidly.(23)
“Today, with the perspective of
time, I am full of admiration for the courage and dedication ... of all those
Poles who in those times, day in, day out, put their lives on the line. I do
not know if we Jews, in the face of the tragedy of another nation, would be
equally capable of this kind of sacrifice.” (24)
“And what right did I have to
condemn them? Why should they risk themselves and their families for a Jewish
boy they didn’t know? Would I have behaved any differently? I knew the answer
to that, too. I wouldn’t have lifted a finger. Everyone was equally
intimidated.” (25)
“I say this without needless
comments, because I’ve been asked before: If I had a family I would not shelter
a Jew during the occupation.” (26)
“I’m not surprised people didn’t
want to hide Jews. Everyone was afraid, who would risk his family’s lives?
... But you absolutely can’t blame an average Pole, I don’t know if anyone
would be more decent, if any Jew would
be more decent.” (27)
“When I later traveled in the
world and Jews would talk to me about how badly Poles behaved with respect to
Jews, that they didn’t hide them, I always had this answer: ‘All right, they
could have done more. But I wonder how many could one find among you, the Jews,
who would hide a Polish family knowing that not only you, but your children your whole family, would get
shot were you found out?’ After that there was always silence and nobody said
anything more.” (28)
“To tell the truth, I don’t know
whether today ... there are many Jews who would do the same for another nation.
We were another nation ...” (29)
“As for the Poles: I do not bear
a grudge because many of them did not want to incur danger for us [Jews]; I do
not know how we would have behaved [towards
them].” (30)
“When we come to Poland with
Israeli youth and I tell them about what happened during the war, I say to
them: ‘I know that if I had to risk my own life, and my family’s, for a
stranger, I probably wouldn’t have the courage to do so.’” (31)
“One must pay tribute to those
Poles who lost their lives rescuing Jews. Moreover, one cannot blame those who
did not rescue Jews. We should not forget that one cannot demand heroism from
ordinary, average people. True there are times and causes that demand heroism,
but only certain individuals can aspire to that. One cannot harbour ill-feelings
towards or have grounds for complaining about someone for not attaining that
level.” (32)
“I always protest when I hear
that Poles did “too little.” How can one judge people who found themselves in
such a difficult situation? Human nature is such that one is concerned foremost
about one’s own life and the lives of close ones. It is their safety that is
the most important thing. One has to have great courage to risk death – one’s
own and one’s children – in order to rescue a stranger. To require this of
ordinary people terrorized by the occupiers is to ask too much. The Jewish
people themselves didn’t pass that test either. Who knows how many heroes like
the Polish Righteous would be found among the Jews.” (33)
“Would Roman risk his own life
now to save others? ‘It’s funny that you should ask that question,’ he said,
‘because when I teach the children, sixth graders, and I tell them how Maria
saved my life, I say to the children, ‘How many of you would be willing to risk
your life to save someone else, knowing that if you’re caught you’ll be put to death?’
And, of course, after hearing my
story, many of them say, ‘Oh, we would, Mr. Frayman, we would.’ But I say, ‘Put
your hands down. Let me tell you honestly, if someone asked me if I’d do it, my
honest answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ Would I be willing to sacrifice my children,
my grandchildren, I don’t know. You don’t know that until you are in that circumstance. I don’t know
how gutsy I am.” (34)
No
religious code, including Jewish, imposes a demand or condemns those who are not
willing to put their lives on the line for others. Otherwise, except for a
handful of
people, we would all fail this test. At a recent screening of The Labyrinth:
The Testimony
of Marian Kolodziej , an award-winning film made by Ron Schmidt, SJ, at Regis
College, University of Toronto, Dr. David Novak of the Centre for Jewish Studies
commented that sacrificing one’s life is not even condoned in Jewish teaching.
The Torah teaches that a person is obliged to help, and to share, but at a point
when helping endangers one’s own life nothing in the Torah permits that. We believe
your students deserve a better grounding in fundamental ethics than MAUS.(35)
Moreover,
there was nothing morally reprehensible –despite Spiegelman’s indignant
assertion to the contrary – in rescuers asking their charges to contribute to
their own upkeep. The much praised Danish rescue operation required enormous
monetary payments on the part of the rescued Jews themselves. (36) Nothing in MAUS addresses these important issues. What teacher’s guides or student
resource materials point any of these important matters out to the students,
who cannot but be left with a negative impression of Polish rescuers?
The lack
of fulsome disclosure in MAUS of the role of Jewish ghetto policemen and agents
in this part of occupied Poland impacts adversely on the image of Poles, who
are portrayed as the only denouncers of Jews outside the ghettos. This is a
historical perversion. Many Jewish survivors describe the Jewish council and
police in a far darker light than MAUS does. As the Jewish testimonies in
Appendix 3 show, the Germans relied on the Jewish police from Sosnowiec to hunt
down Jews who escaped from the ghetto and to help liquidate nearby ghettos.
While the Germans used local police forces throughout occupied Europe to round
up Jews, the Zagłębie Dąbrowskie (which was incorporated into the Reich as part
of Eastern Upper Silesia), the part of occupied Poland shown in Maus, the
Polish police force was disbanded. The Germans set up a Jewish police to maintain
order and to perform other tasks, including the liquidation of ghettos and
searches for escaped Jews.
FOOTNOTES
11
Virtually every European national group – with the exception
of the Poles – volunteered in large numbers to serve in the ranks of the SS.
Members of the national SS formations
included the following: Dutch – 50,000, Belgians –
40,000, Hungarians – 40,000, Croatians – 40,000, Ukrainians – 30,000, Cossacks
– 30,000, Latvians – 30,000, French – 20,000, Albanians – 19,000, Russians –
18,000, Estonians – 15,000, Belorussians – 10,000, Italians – 10,000, Tatars –
10,000, Norwegians – 8,000, Dane
s – 6,000, Slovaks – 6,000, Czechs – 5,000,
Romanians – 5,000, Finns – 4,000, Serbs – 4,000, Bulgarians – 3,000, Armenians
– 3,000, Georgians – 3,000, Uzbeks – 2,000, Greeks – 1,000, Swiss – 1,000,
Swedes – 300, English – 100. See George H. Stein,
The Waffen SS: Hitler’s Elite Guard at War,
1939–1945 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1966); Kurt Georg
Klietmann, Die Waffen-SS: Eine Dokumentation
(Osnabrück: Der Freiwillige, 1965), 499–515.
12
Internet: Internet:
http://www.gradesaver.com/maus/study-guide/character-list/.
13
Internet:
http://en.auschwitz.org/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=17.
14
See Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum,
Internet: http://en.auschwitz.org/m/.
15
Spiegelman, MetaMaus,285.
16
Patricia Treece,
A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe, Saint of
Auschwitz (New York:Harper and Row, 1982), 138, 152–53
17
Gunnar S. Paulsson, “The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews
in Nazi-Occupied Poland,”
The Journal of Holocaust Education, volume 7, nos.
1 & 2 (summer/autumn 1998):
19–44.
18
István Deák, “Memories of Hell,” The New York
Review of Books, June 26, 1997.
19
The Germans did not set up smuggling rings to lure Jews
out of hiding. Smuggling of
people out of Poland, especially Jews, was an
extremely dangerous undertaking. It was
usually carried out by professional smugglers, who,
understandably, charged money. MAUS implies that the Polish smugglers were
simply German collaborators who turned over to the Germans Jews whom they
purported to smuggle, and that the smugglers ended up in Auschwitz because they were no longer
useful to the Germans. Abraham, who had sent the note with the message that he
had been safely smuggled into Hungary, is exonerated as having been forced to
write the note by the Polish smugglers. However, the historical record is quite
different. As Mieczysław Kobylec, who has been recognized by Yad Vashem as a
Righteous Gentile, explains, one of the Polish smugglers, who had previously
acted honestly and conscientiously, was caught by the Germans and, in order to
save himself, agreed to cooperate with them. In other words, he was in no
different position than Abraham, except that in Abraham’s case, cooperating
with the Germans was futile from the outset. See Władysław Bartoszewski and
Zofia Lewin, eds., From Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewin, eds., Righteous
Among Nations: Righteous Among Nations: How Poles Helped the Jews, 1939–1945
(London: Earlscourt Publications, 1969), 153–58,
which is reproduced in Appendix 2.
20
Pola Stein cited in Nechama Tec, When Light Pierced
the Darkness: Christian Rescue
of Jews in
Nazi-Occupied Poland (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 198
6), 29.
21
Hanna Wehr, Ze wspomnień (Montreal: Polish-Jewish Heritage
Foundation of
Canada,
2001).
22
Cited in
Marc Hillel, Le massacre des survivants: En Pologne après l’holocauste
(1945–1947) (Paris:
Plon, 1985), 99.
23
Cited in Małgorzata Niezabitowska, Remnants: The
Last Jews of Poland
(New York: Friendly Press, 1986), 249.
24
Janka Altman, cited in Marek Arczyński and Wiesław Balcerak,
Kryptonim “Żegota”: Z dziejów pomocy Żydom w Polsce
1939–1945,
2nd edition (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1983), 264
25
Roman Frister, The Cap, or the Price of a Life
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 194.
26
Testimony of Marek Oren
(Orenstein), in Piotr Głuchowski and Marcin Kowalski, “Żyd miły z bliska,”
Wyborcza–Duży Format,September 11, 2007.
27
Henryk Prajs, January 2005, Internet:
http://www.centropa.org (Biographies).
28
Ewa S. (Stapp), September 2005, Internet:
http://www.centropa.org (Biographies).
29
Testimony of Bencjon Drutin, in Marzena
Baum-Gruszowska and Dominika Majuk, eds.,
Światła w ciemności: Sprawiedliwi wśród narodów
świata: Relacje historii mówionej w
działaniach edukacyjnych (Lublin: Ośrodek “Brama
Grodzka–Teatr NN,” 2009), 58.
30
Testimony of Emilka Rozencwajg (Shoshana Kossower
Rosenzweig), a Home Army and Jewish underground liaison officer in Warsaw,
interviewed by Anka Grupińska, “Ja
myślałam, że wszyscy są razem,” Tygodnik
Powszechny,May 6, 2001.
31
Testimony of Ada Lubelczyk Willenberg, Interview
with Samuel and Ada Willenberg, “To, o czym pisze Gross jest prawdą,” Polskla
Agencja Prasowa (PAP), January 10, 2011.
32
Henryk Bryskier,
Żydzi pod swastyką czyli getto w Warszawie w XX
wieku (Warsaw: Aspra-Jr, 2006), 31.
33
Szewach Weiss, “Polacy pozostali niezłomni,”
Rzeczpospolita, January 26, 2011.
34
Cited in Bill Tammeus and Jacques Cukierkorn, They
Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust (Columbia,
Missouri and London: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 69. Roman Frayman
also admits: “But the thing I feel guilty about today is that we never
maintained a relationship [with his rescuer, Maria Bałagowa], while she was
living.” Ibid., 70.
35
The Labyrinth is regarded as one of the most
compelling and evocative artistic portrayals of the fate of prisoners in
Auschwitz and well worth viewing by students in a variety of courses including
English, history and religion or ethics.
(Internet: http://www.thelabyrinthdocumentary.com.)
36
During the initial stages of the rescue operation, only
well-to-do Danish Jews could afford the short passage to Sweden. Private
boatmen set their own price and the costs were prohibitive, ranging from 1,000
to 10,000 kroner per person ($160 to $1600 U.S. in the currency of that
period). Afterwards, when organized Danish rescue groups stepped in to
coordinate the flight and to collect funds, the average price per person fell
to 2,000 and then 500 kroner. The total cost of the rescue operation was about
12 million kroner, of which the Jews paid about 7 million kroner, including a
750,000 kroner loan which the Jews had to repay after the war. See Leni Yahil,
The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society of America, 1969), 261–65, 269.
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The Problems with Spiegelman’s MAUS:
Why MAUS Should Not Be Taught in High Schools
