Reasons Why the Jews Failed to Resist the Holocaust Essay

Introduction

The history of humanity is replete with episodes of killing and mass destruction. One such case of atrocities was the Holocaust. It was during that period when unexplained brutality occurred in the Jewish community. In his graphic novel Spiegelman has managed to present the episodes of the cases that occurred during the period.¹ The comic-book-style drawings have managed to speak about surprising events during the period. The most unforeseen issues from Spiegelment’s writings are the vulnerable nature of the Jewish during that period. The graphical format depicts the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats.

This style forces the reader to abandon any preconceived notions of humanity. In other words, it may cause one to ask several questions about why the Holocaust victims accepted being butchered like lambs and did not resist the inhuman acts of the Nazis. Therefore, this paper will argue why the Jews failed to resist through the lens Spiegelman’s of Art of Maus. In other words, it will explain the nature of the war and how the Nazis and Jewish people reacted. The paper will spell out the existing conditions and the events that prevented the members from resisting the Holocaust.

The groundbreaking historical novel presents the testimony of the Holocaust. The award-winning book brings the readers to the lives and experiences of Vladek Spiegelman, a holocaust survivor, and his father during the period. As the novel flashes, it presents the horrors of the activities during and after the war. In the pictures, Spiegelman explains millions of people who had undergone physical injuries, mental deterioration, and tragic deaths during and after the period.

Spiegelman presents the Jews as mice and weak people who could not resist the war while simultaneously showing the Nazis as cats. In other words, Art Spiegelman internalizes his parent’s holocaust experience and comprehends the legacy that had been presented to him. In his art, he shows several reasons why the Jews were vulnerable and could not resist the cases of suffering and death that they experienced.

Art Spiegelman Maus presents not only the horrible episodes of history but also the difficulties of the second generation in coming to terms with the horrendous plight of their ancestors. Its graphical format plays a significant role in molding the story to emerge alive and make the present global community ask many questions. One such question is why the Jews failed to resist these erroneous acts. Why were these people so weak to be presented as mice during the occasion? In other words, the book is not a mere narrative of the Holocaust but a story of Jewish struggle and suffering. It is an eye-opener to help answer the above questions on the presentation of Jewish as weak people. On some occasions, it is regarded as an exciting novel that aims to explain the plight and issues that unfolded during the period.

Arguments for the Failure

Spiegelman uses the memory of the witnesses to address confusion and psychological torment as some of the primary reasons why the Jewish were unable to resist the fight. The most notable reason why the Jews suffered was mental torture. The first-generation survivors struggled with the psychological process of survivor’s guilt. In most cases, they were tortured to the extent of asking several questions about why they had to survive while others died. The sense of worthlessness made the majority of the members become vulnerable and fail to resist the fight. For instance, Spiegelman calls attention to these emotions in a comic manner when he writes, “I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did (II, 16).”²

The quote represents the inherent feeling of the survivor’s guilt that unfolded to the people who survived during the Holocaust. The feeling of inadequacy and lack of psychological goodwill is believed to be the number one cause of the failure to resist the fight. In other words, they lacked the psyche and power critical for the war. In other words, they had lost the battle in their mind and hence became too vulnerable to the enemy. The loss of the war resulted in several Jewish to be butchered as mice.

Lack of family support is also regarded as an essential factor that may have contributed to the failure of Jewish to resist the suffering from the Nazis. In the comic, he blames Artie’s mother for killing his father with her suicide. He depicts his parents as disorganized people who could not support one another during the Holocaust.³ In their best interest, they failed to work as a family to resist the challenges presented during the period.

Artie also presents his parent’s challenge of his father’s stinginess and obsessive behavior. He feels that most people may have suffered the plight of the fight due to their ability to understand the eminent consequences. He believes most killed people fail to mature enough and accept the need to fight back as a family. The above killing case further shows how men suffered at the hands of their wives during the hard times. It depicts the kind of frustration, anger, and the inability of people to work together as a society during the Holocaust.

Artie blames his father’s personality on the failure to retaliate against the Holocaust. He noted that his father was stingy and could not spend a single penny to save his life. The above case is a perfect presentation of the limited resources that the majority of the people had during that period. Unlike the Jewish, the Nazis had well-organized guerrilla units equipped with guns and other critical machines required for the war.⁴ These members were active and would only apply a simple rule of massacring one hundred nearby civilians for every German soldier wounded. Thus, they managed to kill many innocent people across the nation. Historical studies indicate that executions were carried out in small numbers but increased daily to higher numbers. Overall, due to the well-organized guerrilla warfare, the Nazis managed to slaughter millions of people from the Jewish, Greece, and the Soviet Union. This approach was contrary to the limited resources and disunity among Jewish families during the time.

In Maus II, Spiegelman continues with the theme and presents how racism also contributed highly to the failure of the Jewish community to retaliate against the war. According to Art Spiegelman, Mau’s majority of these members felt that they were a minority and could not achieve power. The Nazis accepted that they were the pinnacle of racial evolution and eugenically the best.⁵ For example, Artie sympathizes with the father and the entire generation from the minority group.

Comically, he recalls Anja’s lack of representation in society. Arties engages the question throughout his work by claiming that those people who survived the Holocaust were superior to the people who died. This idea perfectly represents Artie’s struggle with representation in the community.⁶ The Nazi’s sentiments supported that they were superior and could rule over every other minority group. Ideally, the notion made minority members of the group become vulnerable and hence could not resist the various forms of sufferings that they underwent during the Holocaust period.

Finally, religion may have contributed to the high number of deaths and lack of resistance. The Spiegelman Maus art presents the Jewish death as a form of religious sacrifice embedded in many beliefs.⁷ The renowned scholar accepts that most Jewish communities felt that those who died during the Holocaust were martyrs. As Christians, they were expected to face death without any form of resistance. They believed in their religious acts that would work to save them from various forms of suffering that they experienced during the period. Contrary to Christian belief, the Nazis took advantage and killed innocent Jewish people. They took the opportunity to reorganize and work to eliminate the already overpowered Jewish community.

Rebuttal

Nevertheless, despite the notion that the Jewish were helpless and lacked the courage to fight back, society must understand that some of these people fought back. They fought back against the Nazi’s oppression and anti-Semitism in a conceivable manner. These people acted in various ways, from organizing revolts and documentation in dairies, poetry, and creating art. The Jewish also established armed fighting camps to help resist the hostile forces from the Nazis. Therefore, many documentaries have presented first-hand experiences through the lens of people’s experiences from partisans, men, and women who fought in the Allies and the Soviet Union. The Jews were organized to work in attacking and harassing any enemies who attacked the members. Historical records indicate that most people who managed to resist moved to a safe place, becoming war survivors.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Maus has perfectly managed to present the episodes of the cases that occurred during the period in his graphic novel genre. The comic-book-style drawings have been executed to speak about dramatic events that took place during the period. One of the perfect issues presented is the failure of the Jewish to resist the suffering and brutality they experienced during the period. According to the comic novel, these people were butchered like mice without showing any form of resistance. The Nazis showed their might by killing and frustrating the Jewish community. Some possible reasons for the failure of resistance are psychological torture and guilt of losing the war, racial discrimination, and lack of family support during the period. These factors led to the loss of millions of the Jewish who could have been saved from death.

References

Berger, Alan L. “Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale. And Here My Troubles Began.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 11, no. 1 (1992): 134-137. Web.

Bosmajian, Hamida. “The orphaned voice in Art Spiegelman’s Maus I & II.” Literature and Psychology 44, no. 1/2 (1998): 1. Web.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Pantheon Graphic Library, 1986. Web.

Footnotes

1. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A survivor’s tale. Pantheon Graphic Library, 1986.
2. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A survivor’s tale. Pantheon Graphic Library, 1986.
3. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A survivor’s tale. Pantheon Graphic Library, 1986.
4. Bosmajian, Hamida. “The orphaned voice in Art Spiegelman’s Maus I & II.” Literature and Psychology. 1998):1.
5. Berger, Alan L. “Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale. And Here My Troubles Began.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 1992): 134-137.
6. Ibid 136.