The Complete Maus

‘Look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed... Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.'

This has been on my to-read list for ages. Recently it showed up in the news again after being (stupidly) banned in schools in Tennessee, US. It was also praised in Philip Pullmans ‘Deamon Voices' which I read a couple of weeks ago. This motivated me to finally give it a read.

It was... uncomfortable, as any story about the Holocaust should be. Most stories about the war that I was familiar with focused mainly on the heroes. Brave resistance fighters and martyrs who sacrificed themselves to help others. But people are more complicated than that and this story shows that very well. The drawings might be black and white, but the characters are anything but.

When your life and your family are under threat, you will usually do anything to protect them. Whatever the cost, you need to look out for your own. It's understandable but it doesn't show people in the best light. The portrayal of Poles is brutally honest here. Some of us tried to help, some didn't. It's not a good look and it's much different to the heroic stories we get told when we are young. All characters here are represented as animals but all of them are very human. Painfully so sometimes. There are no heroes here. Just people.

With everything going on in Ukraine at the moment, it's worth remembering what happened the last time we saw a war in our corner of the world. History likes to repeat itself, but we don't have to make the same mistakes. Seeing the support and welcome the Ukrainian refugees have received so far gives me hope. Perhaps we've learned something from the past after all.