The Book

Book 1

As the first book opens Art Spiegelman arrives at his Vladek, his father’s house to visit. There he convinces his father to tell him stories about the Holocaust for Art’s book. Vladek starts by telling about when he was young, and when he met Anna, Art’s mother, and talks about when they got married in 1937. Anna gives birth to the couple's first child, Richieu, soon after the marriage. After the birth, Anna becomes consumed with depression, and Vladek takes her to a sanitarium for the next three months. When they return, Vladek is drafted into the Polish army and sent west to guard the border in anticipation of a German attack. Vladek manages to kill one soldier before he is captured and taken to be a prisoner of a war camp. Three months later, Vladek is released and he returns to Sosnowiec, with Anna and twelve other family members living together in an apartment. In 1942, the Jews are forced to move to a separate part of town. Anna’s grandparents were told to move to a separate part of town for the elderly, but Vladek and Anna’s family tried to hide them. Anna’s grandparents were soon found and deported to the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Not long after the remaining Jews are told to report to a building for ‘registration’. Here, the elderly, families with many children, and people without work cards are sent to the left, while everyone else is taken to the right. Those on the left are sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. Vladek's father is sent to the right, but when he sees his daughter alone with her four children on the left, he crosses over to be with her. None survive the war. In 1943, Tosh (Anna’s sister), Tosha’s daughter, and Richieu all poison themselves, instead of having to go to Auschwitz. In Srodula, Vladek constructs a series of bunkers in which the family can hide during the Nazi raids, but they are eventually captured and sent to a compound to await transport to Auschwitz. In bribing his cousin, who is chief of the Jewish Police, him...