Maus

by

Art Spiegelman

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Artie’s father. A Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, Vladek is burdened by memories of fear, suffering, and loss that, until beginning his interviews with Artie, he has not addressed in years. As a young man, Vladek possesses a shrewd intellect and terrific interpersonal skills, which help him navigate perilous situations throughout the war. Though age does not compromise his intelligence, Vladek becomes neurotic, stubborn, and miserly during his later years — characteristics that those around him, especially Artie, find hard to bear. Though Mala insists these traits are flaws in Vladek’s character, rather than unfortunate relics of his war experience, Pavel — Artie’s therapist — believes that they are expressions of the guilt and sadness Vladek feels about surviving the Holocaust. For all his shortcomings, Vladek is a loving father to Artie, whom he adores despite all their bickering, and a devoted husband to Anja, whom he misses terribly after her suicide and claims to think about constantly.

Vladek Spiegelman Quotes in Maus

The Maus quotes below are all either spoken by Vladek Spiegelman or refer to Vladek Spiegelman. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Holocaust and the Responsibility of its Survivors Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Vladek: But this what I just told you — about Lucia and so — I don’t want you should write about this in your book … It has nothing to do with Hitler, with the Holocaust!

Artie: But Pop — it’s great material. It makes everything more real — more human. I want to tell your story, the way it really happened.

Vladek: But this isn’t so proper, so respectful … I can tell you other stories, but such private things I don’t want you should mention.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Lucia Greenberg
Page Number: I.23
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 3 Quotes

I’m not going to die, and I won’t die here! I want to be treated like a human being!

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker)
Page Number: I.54
Explanation and Analysis:

Vladek: Always I went to sleep exhausted. And one night I had a dream … A voice was talking to me. It was, I think, my dead grandfather. It was so real, this voice.

Grandfather: Don’t worry … Don’t worry, my child … You will come out of this place — free! — on the day of Parshas Truma.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker)
Page Number: I.57
Explanation and Analysis:

This is for me a very important date. I checked later on a calendar. It was this parsha on the week I got married to Anja … And this was the parsha in 1948, after the war, on the week you were born. And so it came out to be this parsha you sang on the Saturday of your bar mitzvah!

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman (speaker)
Page Number: I.59
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 4 Quotes

Ilzecki and his wife didn’t come out from the war. But his son remained alive; ours did not.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Richieu, Mr. Ilzecki
Page Number: I.81
Explanation and Analysis:

Cohn had a dry goods store. He was known all over Sosnowiec. Often he gave me cloth with no coupons. I traded also with Pfefer, a fine young man — a Zionist. He was just married. His wife ran screaming in the street … Ach. When I think now of them, it still makes me cry.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Nahum Cohn, Pfefer Cohn
Page Number: I.83-84
Explanation and Analysis:

Vladek: I couldn’t see anywhere my father. But later someone who saw him told me … He came through this same cousin over to the good side. Then came Fela to register. Her, they sent to the left. Four children was too many.

Mr. Spiegelman: Fela! My daughter! How can she manage alone — with four children to take care of?

Vladek: And, what do you think? He sneaked on to the bad side. And those on the bad side never came anymore home.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Mrs. Spiegelman (speaker), Mordecai, Fela
Page Number: I.91
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 5 Quotes

He wants me to go help him fix his roof or something. Shit! Even as a kid I hated helping him around the house. He loved showing off how handy he was … and proving that anything I did was all wrong. He made me completely neurotic about fixing stuff. I mean, I didn’t even own a hammer until we moved into this place! One reason I became an artist was that he thought it was impractical — just a waste of time … it was an area where I wouldn’t have to compete with him.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly
Page Number: I.97
Explanation and Analysis:

When things came worse in our ghetto, we said always: “Thank God the kids are with Persis, safe.” That spring, on one day, the Germans took from Srodula to Auschwitz over 1,000 people. Most they took were kids — some only 2 or 3 years. Some kinds were screaming and screaming. They couldn’t stop. So the Germans swinged them by the legs against a wall … and they never anymore screamed. In this way the Germans treated the little ones what still had survived a little. This I didn’t see with my own eyes, but somebody the next day told me. And I said, “Thank God with Persis our children are safe!”

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Richieu, Bibi, Lonia, Persis
Page Number: I.108
Explanation and Analysis:

Tosha: No! I won’t go to their gas chambers! And my children won’t go to their gas chambers! Bibi! Lonia! Richieu! Come here quickly!

Vladek: Always Tosha carried around her neck some poison … She killed not only herself, but also the 3 children. I’m telling you, it was a tragedy among tragedies. He was such a happy, beautiful boy!

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Richieu, Tosha, Bibi, Lonia
Page Number: I.109
Explanation and Analysis:

Artie: Wouldn’t they have helped you even if you couldn’t pay? I mean, you were from the same family.

Vladek: Hah! You don’t understand … At that time, it wasn’t anymore families. It was everybody to take care for himself!

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Jakov Spiegelman, Haskel Spiegelman
Page Number: I.114
Explanation and Analysis:

Haskel took from me Father-in-Law’s jewels. But, finally, he didn’t help them. On Wednesday the vans came. Anja and I saw her father at the window. He was tearing his hair and crying. He was a millionaire, but even this didn’t save him his life.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Anja (Anna) Spiegelman, Mr. Zylberberg, Haskel Spiegelman
Page Number: I.115
Explanation and Analysis:

Anja: The whole family is gone! Grandma and grandpa! Poppa! Momma! Tosha! Bibi! My Richieu! Now they’ll take Lolek! … Oh God. Let me die too!

Vladek: Come, Anja, get up!

Anja: Why are you pulling me, Vladek? Let me alone! I don’t want to live!

Vladek: No, darling! To die, it’s easy … but you have to struggle for life! Until the last moment we must struggle together! I need you! And you’ll see that together we’ll survive.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Anja (Anna) Spiegelman (speaker), Mr. Zylberberg, Matka Zylberberg, Richieu, Tosha, Bibi, Lolek, Mr. Karmio, Mrs. Karmio
Page Number: I.122
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 6 Quotes

Mala: Pragmatic? Cheap!! It causes him physical pain to part with even a nickel!

Artie: Uh-huh. I used to think the war made him that way.

Mala: Fah! I went through the camps … All our friends went through the camps. Nobody is like him!

Artie: Mm … It’s something that worries me about the book I’m doing about him … In some ways he’s just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Mala Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman
Page Number: I.131
Explanation and Analysis:

And we came here to the concentration camp Auschwitz. And we knew that from here we will not come out anymore … We knew the stories — that they will gas us and throw us in the ovens. This was 1944 … We knew everything. And here we were.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Anja (Anna) Spiegelman
Page Number: I.157
Explanation and Analysis:

Vladek: These notebooks, and other really nice things of mother … one time I had a very bad day … and all of these things I destroyed.

Artie: You what?

Vladek: After Anja died I had to make an order with everything … These papers had too many memories, so I burned them.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Anja (Anna) Spiegelman
Page Number: I.158
Explanation and Analysis:

God damn you! You — you murderer!

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman, Anja (Anna) Spiegelman
Page Number: I.159
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

Priest [to Vladek]: Your number starts with 17. In Hebrew that’s “k’minyan tov.” A very Seventeen is a very good omen … It ends with 13, the age a Jewish boy becomes a man … And look! Added together it total 18. That’s “chai,” the Hebrew number of life. I can’t know if I’ll survive this hell, but I’m certain you’ll come through all this alive.

Vladek [to Artie]: I started to Believe. I tell you, he put another life in me. And whenever it was very bad I looked and said: “Yes. The priest was right! It totals eighteen.”

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), The Priest (speaker), Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman
Page Number: II.28
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 2 Quotes

Vladek died of congestive heart failure on August 18, 1982 … Françoise and I stayed with him in the Catskills back in August 1979. Vladek started working as a tinman in Auschwitz in the spring of 1944 … I started working on this page at the very end of February 1987. In May 1987 Françoise and I are expecting a baby … Between May 16, 1944 and May 24, 1944, over 100,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed in Auschwitz.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, Nadja Mouly Spiegelman
Page Number: II.41
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 3 Quotes

Vladek: What happened on you, Françoise? You went crazy, or what?! I had the whole time to watch out that this shvartser doesn’t steal us the groceries from the back seat!

Françoise: What?! That’s outrageous! How can you, of all people, be such a racist! You talk about blacks the way the Nazis talked about Jews!

Vladek: Ach! I thought really you are more smart than this, Françoise … It’s not even to compare, the shvartsers and the Jews!

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Françoise Mouly (speaker)
Page Number: II.99
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 5 Quotes

More I don’t need to tell you. We were both very happy, and lived happy, happy ever after.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman, Anja (Anna) Spiegelman
Page Number: II.136
Explanation and Analysis:

So … Let’s stop, please, your tape recorder … I’m tired from talking, Richieu, and it’s enough stories for now.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman, Richieu
Page Number: II.136
Explanation and Analysis:
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Vladek Spiegelman Quotes in Maus

The Maus quotes below are all either spoken by Vladek Spiegelman or refer to Vladek Spiegelman. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Holocaust and the Responsibility of its Survivors Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Vladek: But this what I just told you — about Lucia and so — I don’t want you should write about this in your book … It has nothing to do with Hitler, with the Holocaust!

Artie: But Pop — it’s great material. It makes everything more real — more human. I want to tell your story, the way it really happened.

Vladek: But this isn’t so proper, so respectful … I can tell you other stories, but such private things I don’t want you should mention.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Lucia Greenberg
Page Number: I.23
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 3 Quotes

I’m not going to die, and I won’t die here! I want to be treated like a human being!

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker)
Page Number: I.54
Explanation and Analysis:

Vladek: Always I went to sleep exhausted. And one night I had a dream … A voice was talking to me. It was, I think, my dead grandfather. It was so real, this voice.

Grandfather: Don’t worry … Don’t worry, my child … You will come out of this place — free! — on the day of Parshas Truma.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker)
Page Number: I.57
Explanation and Analysis:

This is for me a very important date. I checked later on a calendar. It was this parsha on the week I got married to Anja … And this was the parsha in 1948, after the war, on the week you were born. And so it came out to be this parsha you sang on the Saturday of your bar mitzvah!

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman (speaker)
Page Number: I.59
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 4 Quotes

Ilzecki and his wife didn’t come out from the war. But his son remained alive; ours did not.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Richieu, Mr. Ilzecki
Page Number: I.81
Explanation and Analysis:

Cohn had a dry goods store. He was known all over Sosnowiec. Often he gave me cloth with no coupons. I traded also with Pfefer, a fine young man — a Zionist. He was just married. His wife ran screaming in the street … Ach. When I think now of them, it still makes me cry.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Nahum Cohn, Pfefer Cohn
Page Number: I.83-84
Explanation and Analysis:

Vladek: I couldn’t see anywhere my father. But later someone who saw him told me … He came through this same cousin over to the good side. Then came Fela to register. Her, they sent to the left. Four children was too many.

Mr. Spiegelman: Fela! My daughter! How can she manage alone — with four children to take care of?

Vladek: And, what do you think? He sneaked on to the bad side. And those on the bad side never came anymore home.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Mrs. Spiegelman (speaker), Mordecai, Fela
Page Number: I.91
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 5 Quotes

He wants me to go help him fix his roof or something. Shit! Even as a kid I hated helping him around the house. He loved showing off how handy he was … and proving that anything I did was all wrong. He made me completely neurotic about fixing stuff. I mean, I didn’t even own a hammer until we moved into this place! One reason I became an artist was that he thought it was impractical — just a waste of time … it was an area where I wouldn’t have to compete with him.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly
Page Number: I.97
Explanation and Analysis:

When things came worse in our ghetto, we said always: “Thank God the kids are with Persis, safe.” That spring, on one day, the Germans took from Srodula to Auschwitz over 1,000 people. Most they took were kids — some only 2 or 3 years. Some kinds were screaming and screaming. They couldn’t stop. So the Germans swinged them by the legs against a wall … and they never anymore screamed. In this way the Germans treated the little ones what still had survived a little. This I didn’t see with my own eyes, but somebody the next day told me. And I said, “Thank God with Persis our children are safe!”

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Richieu, Bibi, Lonia, Persis
Page Number: I.108
Explanation and Analysis:

Tosha: No! I won’t go to their gas chambers! And my children won’t go to their gas chambers! Bibi! Lonia! Richieu! Come here quickly!

Vladek: Always Tosha carried around her neck some poison … She killed not only herself, but also the 3 children. I’m telling you, it was a tragedy among tragedies. He was such a happy, beautiful boy!

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Richieu, Tosha, Bibi, Lonia
Page Number: I.109
Explanation and Analysis:

Artie: Wouldn’t they have helped you even if you couldn’t pay? I mean, you were from the same family.

Vladek: Hah! You don’t understand … At that time, it wasn’t anymore families. It was everybody to take care for himself!

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Jakov Spiegelman, Haskel Spiegelman
Page Number: I.114
Explanation and Analysis:

Haskel took from me Father-in-Law’s jewels. But, finally, he didn’t help them. On Wednesday the vans came. Anja and I saw her father at the window. He was tearing his hair and crying. He was a millionaire, but even this didn’t save him his life.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Anja (Anna) Spiegelman, Mr. Zylberberg, Haskel Spiegelman
Page Number: I.115
Explanation and Analysis:

Anja: The whole family is gone! Grandma and grandpa! Poppa! Momma! Tosha! Bibi! My Richieu! Now they’ll take Lolek! … Oh God. Let me die too!

Vladek: Come, Anja, get up!

Anja: Why are you pulling me, Vladek? Let me alone! I don’t want to live!

Vladek: No, darling! To die, it’s easy … but you have to struggle for life! Until the last moment we must struggle together! I need you! And you’ll see that together we’ll survive.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Anja (Anna) Spiegelman (speaker), Mr. Zylberberg, Matka Zylberberg, Richieu, Tosha, Bibi, Lolek, Mr. Karmio, Mrs. Karmio
Page Number: I.122
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 6 Quotes

Mala: Pragmatic? Cheap!! It causes him physical pain to part with even a nickel!

Artie: Uh-huh. I used to think the war made him that way.

Mala: Fah! I went through the camps … All our friends went through the camps. Nobody is like him!

Artie: Mm … It’s something that worries me about the book I’m doing about him … In some ways he’s just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Mala Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman
Page Number: I.131
Explanation and Analysis:

And we came here to the concentration camp Auschwitz. And we knew that from here we will not come out anymore … We knew the stories — that they will gas us and throw us in the ovens. This was 1944 … We knew everything. And here we were.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Anja (Anna) Spiegelman
Page Number: I.157
Explanation and Analysis:

Vladek: These notebooks, and other really nice things of mother … one time I had a very bad day … and all of these things I destroyed.

Artie: You what?

Vladek: After Anja died I had to make an order with everything … These papers had too many memories, so I burned them.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Anja (Anna) Spiegelman
Page Number: I.158
Explanation and Analysis:

God damn you! You — you murderer!

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman, Anja (Anna) Spiegelman
Page Number: I.159
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

Priest [to Vladek]: Your number starts with 17. In Hebrew that’s “k’minyan tov.” A very Seventeen is a very good omen … It ends with 13, the age a Jewish boy becomes a man … And look! Added together it total 18. That’s “chai,” the Hebrew number of life. I can’t know if I’ll survive this hell, but I’m certain you’ll come through all this alive.

Vladek [to Artie]: I started to Believe. I tell you, he put another life in me. And whenever it was very bad I looked and said: “Yes. The priest was right! It totals eighteen.”

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), The Priest (speaker), Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman
Page Number: II.28
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 2 Quotes

Vladek died of congestive heart failure on August 18, 1982 … Françoise and I stayed with him in the Catskills back in August 1979. Vladek started working as a tinman in Auschwitz in the spring of 1944 … I started working on this page at the very end of February 1987. In May 1987 Françoise and I are expecting a baby … Between May 16, 1944 and May 24, 1944, over 100,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed in Auschwitz.

Related Characters: Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman (speaker), Vladek Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, Nadja Mouly Spiegelman
Page Number: II.41
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 3 Quotes

Vladek: What happened on you, Françoise? You went crazy, or what?! I had the whole time to watch out that this shvartser doesn’t steal us the groceries from the back seat!

Françoise: What?! That’s outrageous! How can you, of all people, be such a racist! You talk about blacks the way the Nazis talked about Jews!

Vladek: Ach! I thought really you are more smart than this, Françoise … It’s not even to compare, the shvartsers and the Jews!

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Françoise Mouly (speaker)
Page Number: II.99
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 5 Quotes

More I don’t need to tell you. We were both very happy, and lived happy, happy ever after.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman, Anja (Anna) Spiegelman
Page Number: II.136
Explanation and Analysis:

So … Let’s stop, please, your tape recorder … I’m tired from talking, Richieu, and it’s enough stories for now.

Related Characters: Vladek Spiegelman (speaker), Arthur (Artie) Spiegelman, Richieu
Page Number: II.136
Explanation and Analysis: