It has been nearly eighty years since
that decisive day when Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi concentration camp complexes, was liberated
under Allied banners. And yet, it is unthinkable that humankind
will ever be completely free from the tragedy and atrocity of the Holocaust—nor
should we be. Engendered by Adolf
Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany and radicalized by the onset of the Second
World War, the Holocaust was an anti-Semitic campaign that saw the systematic
extermination of some six million European Jews. When educating ourselves on
the grievous realities of a historical event such as this, no accounts are more
invaluable than those of survivors, many of whom have been brave enough to
render their personal experiences into published works. Through analyzing the
differences in format, narrational perspective, and focal themes between Art Spiegelman and Henry Oster’s
respective novels Maus II and The Stable Boy of Auschwitz, we can
better appreciate how both works distinctly contribute to Second World War and Holocaust literature, and also serve to expand and
challenge public perception of these catastrophic events.
Both Maus II and The Stable Boy of Auschwitz are
classified as memoirs, but these two narratives vary importantly in terms of
format. The sequel volume to his avant-garde Maus I, Maus II is a postmodern graphic
novel not only written by Art Spiegelman, but illustrated by him
as well. What makes the graphic style
of this story so crucial to its effectiveness is Spiegelman’s decision to
depict human beings as rather crudely anthropomorphized animals. With Jews
represented as mice, Germans as cats, and the Polish as pigs, Spiegelman
provides a visual commentary on power-imbalance, racial prejudice, and loss of
humanity. Over the years, Spiegelman’s artistic approach to dealing with such
sensitive matters has generated as much controversy as it has critical acclaim,
but none can argue its evocativeness. Jagged-edged, darkly shaded images of Art sitting atop a fly swarmed mound of
naked, emaciated rodent corpses (Spiegelman 41.3) as seen in Chapter Two:
“Auschwitz (Time Flies)” are the sort that make readers necessarily discomfited
and that stay with them long after the page has been turned. In comparison, The Stable Boy of Auschwitz is a more traditionally autobiographical novel. With the assistance of Dexter Ford, Oster takes us readers
on a harrowing journey—his harrowing journey
—from
childhood to adulthood, internment to freedom, desperate survival to hopeful
normalcy. Without the visual rhetoric that Spiegelman is known for, the potency of The Stable Boy of Auschwitz resides in the absolute rawness of his
account. Oster’s vulnerability and candor makes reading this novel feel more
like a one-sided conversation than a story. For example, in the aftermath of a
random, pulse-racing massacre of Auschwitz
captives recounted in Chapter Twenty-Four: “In the Line of Fire,” Oster writes,
“If the Germans had seen that we had escaped from the courtyard, we were sure
that they would finish us off. I've never been more terrified in my life. I had to struggle
to control my breathing when I finally
got to our barracks. I found that I
had soiled my pants in my terror—I was a real mess” (102). No exaggerated
verbiage, no attempted eloquence, just the truth; the truth in and of itself is
poignant enough. But more on Oster’s narration later. For now, it is to be
acknowledged that while the formats of these two memoirs offer
completely different reading
experiences, they are equally successful in revealing the
horrors of the Holocaust.
Spiegelman and Oster’s survival narratives are further differentiated by
the fact that one is told from a secondhand perspective, and the other is told
from a firsthand perspective. While Vladek Spiegelman, Polish Jew and Holocaust
survivor, is the apparent protagonist of Maus
II, his son, Art, or Artie, is the author and true narrational
voice. This complex dynamic between survivor and storyteller is an additional
source of tension throughout the novel’s already tension- high events.
Because no matter how brutally thorough Art’s
father certainly was in communicating his experience, and no matter how
faithfully Art was able to then
artistically relate said experience, the younger Spiegelman can never fully
comprehend what it was to live through a Nazi concentration camp.
In a moment of frustration while talking to his psychiatrist in Chapter Two, this is something that Artie admits: “My book? Hah! What book?? Some part of me doesn't
want to draw or think about Auschwitz.
I can’t visualize it clearly and I can't begin to imagine what it felt like”
(Spiegelman 46.1A). Conversely, in The
Stable Boy of Auschwitz, Henry Oster tells his own story, and as such,
there is a level of intimacy about this novel that is simply impossible for
Spiegelman to equal. This intimacy is entirely unromantic and at times
stomach-turning to read, as is especially the
case in Chapter Twenty-Four. Before relating one of the worst traumas he endured at Auschwitz, Oster states, “In all the years since I was
imprisoned in Auschwitz, there is one
story I never talked about, one experience I never shared with anyone else”
(98). He then proceeds to describe in terrible detail what it was like to be
penned in with other unlucky victims when “Two machine-gun crews that had been
concealed in the trucks started firing, their muzzles flashing in the darkness,
spitting bullets right into the crowd of prisoners” (Oster
101). Susan Oster, second wife of Henry Oster, spoke to us about how her
husband was hesitant to share this event even with her, and when he did, it was
with weeping— so terrible was the trauma still. This should only cause us to
appreciate Oster’s vulnerability in this novel more. He is inviting the public
into the darkest, most tormented recesses of his memory, and it is frightfully
powerful. Now, to be clear, the deeply personal quality of Oster’s narrative in no way suggests that Spiegelman’s is somehow less authentic. Rather,
having access to the
perspective of a survivor as well as that of a survivor’s child allows us
multi-dimensional insight into the suffering of Nazi persecuted Jews.
Although there are definite thematic through-lines running between Maus II and The Stable Boy of Auschwitz—most essential
being survival and trauma—Spiegelman and Oster offer different and independently edifying
explorations of these.
Trauma is a transmittable thing,
and it is this theory that is
at the very heart of Maus II. In
Chapter Two, Spiegelman confronts intergenerational trauma head-on, exposing
through a therapy session how his psychology and identity have been negatively
altered by his father’s experiences during the Holocaust. To his psychiatrist, Artie confesses that despite the wholesale
success of his graphic novel, he often feels like a failure or a fraud for not
having survived what his father survived at
Auschwitz. Abashed, he
says, “No matter what l accomplish, it doesn't seem like much compared to
surviving Auschwitz” (Spiegelman
44.3A). This comment then cracks open an important conversation about
survivor’s guilt, which
is another vital
sub-theme of Maus II.
Between Artie’s petulant
attitude and Vladek’s overbearing expectations, father and son never did have
an easy relationship. Even after Vladek
has died, Artie harbors a lot of
resentment toward him, which he feels guilt over, considering all that his
father endured. But Artie’s psychiatrist suggests that it was Vladek’s
guilt as a survivor that caused the discord between
them to begin
with. He submits, “Maybe your father needed to
show that he was always right—that he could always survive— because he felt
guilty about surviving” (Spiegelman 44.3B). What he is saying, more or less, is
that Vladek’s survivor’s guilt and Artie’s
non-survivor’s guilt are inseparable. In Oster’s The Stable Boy of Auschwitz, Heinz’s trauma is exhibited as more
individual and more immediate.
Throughout
the novel, Oster never allows readers to relax, to get comfortable, which only evinces the constant threat that Jews were
under. The worst part is that, in the end, it didn’t matter how well they
performed their assigned jobs; they had no control over whether they lived or
died, as is so violently exhibited in Chapter Twenty-Four. In that same
chapter, Oster talks about how, existing in that kind of reality, he had to
mentally remove himself from the trauma. But
in doing so, he, like so many others, sacrificed a part of his humanity: “Even though we Jews
were being persecuted—and often executed—as a group, in order to survive in
this hellhole, you first had to look out for yourself. We were desensitized,
demeaned and dehumanized. We were like robots, doing whatever we could to stay
alive” (Oster 104). For these people, rewired by brutality and terror, or
reduced to their most animal selves, as Spiegelman portrays, survival became
the only objective. This is the most consequential theme in both Maus II and The Stable Boy of Auschwitz.
Art Spiegelman’s Maus II and Henry Oster’s The Stable Boy of Auschwitz are
comparable in that both make accessible the experiences of Holocaust
survivors. That said, it would be negligence to assume that one survivor’s
story is the same as another’s. Indeed, as discussed in this essay, the different formats, narrational
perspectives, and themes the authors present in these two memoirs are what
make them such valuable contributions to Holocaust and Second World War education. And yet, there are those who have claimed
that such upsetting, honest material
has no appropriate place in school curriculum. This conservative mentality has
been met with much objection, and the counterargument is simple: These books,
however difficult they are to read, are history, and history cannot be
censored. The Holocaust must be taught and studied because it happened, and because it could happen again. But if we are to have any hope at all for a better humanity, it is imperative
that we remember with active rumination the evil we are capable of.
---Natalie Grill
