MAUS by Art Spiegelman - Summary

Because of the non-linear (flashback-filled) storytelling, I decided to summarize the plot using bullet points instead of conventional paragraphs. The tense of the bulleted sentences indicate the time of occurrence of the item - past or present. The order of the bullet points correspond to the sequence in which the actions appeared in the book.

Numbers in parentheses (n) indicate page numbers. I can't tell the edition - the title page of Chapter 1 begins on page 9.

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The book begins with an epigraph attributed to HITLER: "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human".

One/The Sheik

·       Mala and Vladek don't get along

·       Vladek had two heart attacks

·       Art's mother is dead

·       Art asks Vladek to tell him Vladek's story

·       Vladek criticizes Art about the way he spends his time

·       Vladek was in the textile business

·       Vladek brags that he was good looking and a ladies' man before the war

·       Vladek's first girlfriend was Lucia Greenberg, who wanted to be engaged to him but was poor (15)

·       Vladek's cousin introduces him to Anja. They talk on the phone every day

·       Vladek breaks up with Lucia

·       Anja's family is rich

·       Anja's family invite Vladek to dinner

·       Vladek sees pills in Anja's closet and investigates – it's for skinny and nerves (19)

·       By 1939 they're engaged

·       Vladek moves from Czestochowa to Sosnowiec

·       Flashback to after the engagement but before the move. Lucia has sent Anja a letter criticizing Vladek but Vladek convinces her to marry him

·       They get married February 14 1936

·       Art promises not to include embarrassing private things about Vladek's life in the story but clearly he has anyways

Two/The Honeymoon

·       Anna is involved in communist affairs

·       She hides some papers with a seamstress tenant who gets arrested

·       Vladek orders her to stop her affiliation with the commies

·       She agrees

·       Anna's father gives Vladek money to open a textile factory which is running by October 1937

·       Richieu, Vladek and Anna's first son, is born premature

·       Richieu didn't durvive the war

·       Art was also premature and had to have his arm broken to birth him

·       Vladek blames Art for spilling his pills (clearly not Art's fault)

·       Anna gets postpartum depression

·       Vladek and Anna go to a sanitarium

·       They see a swastika for the first time as they go past a small town. They know what it means and are scared (1938) (29)

·       They hear of terrible things happening to Jews all over Germany – being made to give up their businesses to germans and flee the country and be banished from towns

·       The sanitarium is beautiful and they have a luxury room

·       Too keep Anna entertained Vladek tells her a story about fleeing the border in the 1914 war. As the family rode out of town they dropped a pillow. The father unhitches the horse and rides back to get it. This makes Anna happy

·       Anna is transformed and after three months they leave the sanitarium

·       In the meantime, Vladek's factory has been robbed

·       When they return, Antisemitic activity in Bielsko, which is where they are, increases

·       They think Hitler is only interested in the parts of Poland that used to belong to germany pre-WWI

·       In 1939 Vladek gets conscripted into the Polish army

·       Anja and Richieu and his Polish governess go to Sosnowiec and Vladek goes to the German front

·       Vladek spills his pills for the second time

·       He tells Art about his eye problems – he has one glass eye and one with a cataract

Three/Prisoner of War (38)

·       Art has dinner with Vladek and Mala to find out more about Vladek's past

·       They talk about Vladek's strictness regarding food in Art's youth (39)

·       Back to 1939 when Vladek was drafted

·       Vladek is in the trenches on the german border

·       Vladek's father served in the Russian army and pulled out 14 of his own teeth to escape it and consequently tried to avoid getting his sons conscripted to the Polish army via starvation and sleep deprivation

·       This worked with Vladek's brother but not with Vladek so Vladek was conscripted and thus ended up in the trenches

·       Vladek shoots a soldier disguised as a tree until he dies

·       The Germans take Vladek as POW

·       He finds the soldier that he killed whose name was Jan

·       He and a few other Jewish POWs are set to cleaning stables and living in tents without heat in the freezing Polish winter

·       Vladek bathes and exercises everyday to keep clean and healthy and strong

·       He prays

·       He writes letters

·       He gets a package

·       Vladek volunteers for work at the German front

·       He and the other volunteers work hard but get warm beds and plenty of food

·       Vladek is visited by his grandfather in his sleep and is told that he will be released on the day of Parshas Truma

·       The day of Parshas Truma, they are indeed taken away from the work camp. Parshas Truma has turned out to be a very important day for Vladek throughout his life

·       They are taken 300 miles north of where they were to Lublin and hear tell of 600 released Jewish POWs, shot – turns out POWs are protected and free Jews are not

·       Vladek stays with Orbach, a friend of the family's, at Lublin and then escapes on a train without papers across the border back to his side of Poland

·       His mother has cancer and dies a month or two later

·       He surprises Anja with a visit. Richieu starts crying because of the cold buttons

·       Back to the present. Vladek has thrown Art's coat out because it is shabby, and gives him his own. Mala pesters Art to stay for coffee but he refuses

Four/The Noose Tightens

·       Art returns to Vladek's with a new trench coat

·       1940. Vladek is back home from the POW camp

·       He finds ways to make money without coupons and official papers

·       They try to sell their bedroom set but Nazis take it away without paying

·       Vladek goes to visit Ilzecki who suggests Vladek give Richieu to a Polish neighbor to protect but Anja refuses

·       All the Sosnowiec Jews are relocated into the Stara Sosnowiec quarter and Vladek's family of 12 gets 2.5 rooms

·       Then one day a few Jews that Vladek dealt with were hung for trading without coupons

·       He is scared for a while but then helps sell groceries under the counter without coupons

·       Fortunately he doesn't get caught

·       The Jewish police makes them turn over Anja's grandparents to ostensibly an old-age quarter but they are really gassed in Auschwitz

·       All the Jews of Sosnowiec get a summons to the stadium

·       They go and there's a selection which they pass

·       One third, including Vladek's father, remain at the stadium and get shot with machine guns

·       Vladek is tired and Art goes to speak with Mala who tells Art about her mother and her mother's brother who both ended up dead in Auschwitz

Chapter Five/Mouse Holes

·       Art doesn't help Vladek repair a roof pipe

·       Vladek is upset and Art suspects lack of help is the reason but Mala says Vladek found a comic Art drew years ago about his mother's suicide – Vladek is miserable and Art wavers between feeling guilty and blaming hitler or menopausal depression. Last time he saw her, he snubbed her when she expressed her feelings for him

·       Vladek says this comic brought back memories

·       Mala is upset because of all the thinking Vladek does about Anja

·       Back to the past: until 1943 all was back to normal in the semi-ghetto. But then they have to move to Srodula and pay the Poles whose houses they move into to move into their old Sosnowiec houses

·       The family members are set to working

·       Wolfe's uncle Persis comes and offers to take some family members away to the Zawiercie ghetto, including Richieu, because he has some influence with the Germans and a better chance of keeping them safe

·       They evacuate that ghetto to Auschwitz and Tosha, Anja's sister, poisons herself and the three kids to avoid gassing

·       Back in Srodula, Vladeks family builds a hiding place, but other jews keep being taken away

·       One man tricks them into being caught by the Gestapo. There, Vladek's cousin Haskel who is with the Jewish Police helps Anja and Vladek escape, but not Anja's parents

·       Haskel survived the war and lives in Poland, married

·       Funny stories about Kombinator Pesach, also a cousin of Vladek's

·       Srodula keeps emptying of Jews

·       Anja despairs because everyone close to her has been deported to Auschwitz and killed

·       Present – Vladek gives Art key to his safety deposit box

·       Mala keeps changing Vladek's will

Six/Mouse Trap

·       Mala complains to Art that Vladek treats her badly

·       Art complains that Mala is after his money

·       Back to the past: Vladek and Anja make their way from Srodula to Sosnowiec

·       They stop at Riushu's old governess who turns them away, and then at Anja's father' sjanitor who lets them in but advises them to find a different place

·       Vladek runs into a Jew who tells him where he can buy food and a woman, Kawka, at whose farm he can hide

·       Vladek and Anja stay at the barn and occasionally  Vladek leaves to get food via the German and Officals' car

·       Vladek makes friends with Mrs. Motonowa and she offers to let them stay with her

·       Anja and Mrs. Motonowa's son like each other very much

·       She turns the couple away because her goods business is discovered

·       They go back to the barn and Kawkasuggests they try to go to Hungary

·       He goes back to Szopienice where Mrs. Motonowa lives and sees her again by chance and she invites the couple to live with her again

·       Her husband returns and she has to hide the couple in the storage cellar

·       He leaves and they return but Vladek feels unsafe and wants to go to Hungary, pending one of the smuggler's nephews – Abraham – returns from Hungary safely

·       He goes back to Kawka to speak with the men who know how to smuggle people into Hungary

·       The smugglers turn out to be people with whom Vladek was acquainted before the war

·       Vladek wants to go to Hungary but Anja is frightened

·       He goes to visit Miloch, who helped him in the concentration camp. Miloch and his wife and kid  are living in a literal garbage hole and he suggests they flee to Hungary

·       Anja is super reluctant

·        Miloch and family spend the rest of the war with Motonowa

·       They board the train but get caught by the Gestapo and taken to a prison in Bielsko-Biala

·       They are taken to Auschwitz via cramped truck and know they will never get out

·       Vladek tells Art he has burned all of Anja's diaries after she killed herelf

·       Art accuses Vladek of being a murderer because of the destruction