50 Fun Facts About Maus

In Maus, where Art Spiegelman draws Jewish characters as mice, which animal represents the Germans who hunt them?

Cats let Spiegelman turn the Nazis' own vermin propaganda into a predator-and-prey picture. He drew them no bigger than the mice, leaving readers to make their own moral judgments.

Art Spiegelman's Maus was the first graphic novel ever to win which major US honor, given as a special award?

The Pulitzer Prize went to Maus as a special award in 1992, sidestepping the argument over which category it belonged in. Critics could not agree whether it was memoir, history or biography.

In Maus, what did Vladek do with the notebooks in which his late wife Anja wrote down her wartime story?

Burned them, he admits, on a day after her death when the memories were too much. All he recalls of the pages is her wish that her son would one day be interested in them.

Which 1980s sticker-card craze did Maus creator Art Spiegelman co-create in his day job at Topps?

Garbage Pail Kids came out of the Topps job that was Spiegelman's main income for two decades, including his first years on Maus. He also co-created Wacky Packages there.

A school board in which US state voted in 2022 to pull Maus from its curriculum, sending sales soaring?

Tennessee's McMinn County board objected to profanity, violence and nudity in the book. Within days of the news Maus was the best-selling book on Amazon, and Spiegelman called the vote "Orwellian".

In Maus, what do Jewish characters tie over their faces when they try to pass as non-Jewish Poles?

Pig masks, with the strings showing at the back, mark a mouse passing as a Pole. Anja's disguise is drawn as less convincing than Vladek's, since she could not pass as easily.

Art Spiegelman believed which 1986 animated film from Steven Spielberg's company had borrowed its idea from Maus?

An American Tail reached cinemas three months after the first Maus volume, to Spiegelman's relief. He wanted his book out first so that it would not be compared with the cartoon.

In Maus, which skill makes a kapo protect Vladek and feed him well during his first months in Auschwitz?

Teaching English to his kapo earned Vladek a table full of food and a uniform that fit. He even came away with a belt, a spoon and shoes for a friend whose trousers kept slipping down.

Maus II opens with a 1930s German newspaper quote attacking which cartoon star as a filthy carrier of bacteria?

Mickey Mouse was "the most miserable ideal ever revealed", the article raged, urging young Germans to wear the swastika instead. Spiegelman traced his mouse symbol for Jews to propaganda of this kind.

In Maus II, which animal does Art consider for his French wife Françoise before settling on a mouse?

A frog was one idea on Art's sketchpad, along with a moose and a rabbit. Françoise insists on being a mouse too, pointing out that she converted to Judaism.

In the prologue of Maus, young Art's friends leave him behind after he falls while doing what?

Roller-skating home in tears, Art gets no comfort from Vladek: "If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!"

In Maus, which piece of home fitness equipment does Vladek use while he first tells Art about his youth in Poland?

An exercise bike is where Vladek starts his story, pedalling as he talks. In a later chapter he stays on it so long that he grows dizzy and has to lie down.

In Maus, which former girlfriend of Vladek's sends Anja a letter claiming he only wants her family's wealth?

Lucia had dated Vladek for years and begged him to take her back once he was engaged. Her letter stopped Anja's phone calls until he travelled to Sosnowiec to explain himself.

In Maus, what does the factory owned by Anja's father, which made the Zylberberg family rich, produce?

Hosiery paid for the Zylberbergs' comfortable life, and marrying Anja brought Vladek a share of the business. German overseers later took over every Jewish-owned firm, leaving the family to live on savings.

In Maus, what had newlywed Anja secretly been passing along that got her seamstress neighbor arrested instead?

Communist messages from an old boyfriend in Warsaw were what Anja relayed and then hid next door. The neighbor spent three months in jail, and Vladek made Anja promise to stop.

In Maus, in which country is the costly sanitarium where Anja spends three months after Richieu's birth?

Czechoslovakia gave the couple their first glimpse of what was coming: from the train they saw swastika flags flying in town centres. Anja came home from the sanitarium much better.

As a Polish soldier in Maus, Vladek fires at what seemingly moving object, which turns out to hide a German?

A tree was really a German soldier using branches for cover, and Vladek kept shooting until the man was dead. Soon captured himself, he had to carry that same body back for burial.

In Maus, Vladek dreams that his grandfather promises his release from a POW camp on which Jewish occasion?

Parshas Truma arrived three months later and Vladek was freed, just as the dream foretold. He had married Anja during that same week of the year, and Art would later be born in it.

In Maus, which of Art's belongings does Vladek throw out behind his back, judging it too shabby for his son?

His coat went out with the trash, a startling move from a man who never throws anything away. Vladek wanted his son better dressed and meant to replace it.

In Maus, how did Vladek's father try to make him fail the Polish army medical exam at twenty-one?

Starved him and kept him from sleeping, so that he would be too weak to pass. It worked for one year only: Vladek begged not to go through it again and joined the army the next.

In Maus, where must all the Jews of Sosnowiec report for a 'registration' that sends thousands to their deaths?

The stadium held perhaps 30,000 people, sorted left or right at tables. Vladek's father was sent to the safe side, then slipped across to stay with his daughter and her four children.

In Maus, what happens to Nahum Cohn, Vladek's trading partner, after he is caught selling goods without coupons?

Hanged in public with his son, he was left on display for days as a warning to other traders. Vladek had often done business with him and was too frightened to go outside.

In Maus, Vladek builds an attic hiding place in the Srodula ghetto that can be entered only through what?

A chandelier hid the way up to the attic bunker, his second after one beneath a coal bin. The family was given away soon after they caught a stranger nearby and let him go out of pity.

In Maus, how does Anja's sister Tosha keep Richieu and the other children in her care from the gas chambers?

She poisons them and herself as the Zawiercie ghetto is emptied. Vladek and Anja had sent Richieu there believing it safer, and learned of his death only much later.

In Maus, which cousin of Vladek's, a chief of the Jewish Police, gets him out of a holding compound for a bribe?

Haskel took the family's valuables and freed Vladek and Anja, but left her parents to be deported. He kept in with the Germans by losing to them at poker on purpose every week.

In Maus, what was accidentally baked into the cake Pesach sold in the ghetto, sickening everyone who ate it?

Laundry soap had gone in with the flour by mistake. Pesach, one of Vladek's scheming cousins, made a great deal of money on the cake before his customers fell ill.

In Maus, which black-market grocer hides Vladek and Anja in her home, then in her cellar when her husband visits?

Mrs. Motonowa charged for her hospitality but was kind, and took the couple back after once throwing them out in a panic. They spent ten days among the rats while her husband was home.

In Maus, what happens when Vladek and Anja board a train with smugglers who promised a route to Hungary?

The Gestapo arrest them: the smugglers had sold them out. The letter saying the route was safe had been written at gunpoint by a man who went ahead of them.

In Maus, what does Art call Vladek at the end of the first volume after learning Anja's diaries are gone?

Murderer is the word Art throws at his father, because the lost pages were his mother's own voice. They held the only record of what happened to her after the couple were separated.

Which earlier Art Spiegelman comic about his mother's suicide, drawn with human faces, is reprinted in Maus?

Prisoner on the Hell Planet upsets Vladek when he comes across a copy years later. Its harsh, woodcut-like style breaks with the animal heads drawn everywhere else in the book.

At the start of Maus II, what false news does Vladek leave by phone to make sure Art calls him back?

A heart attack was the lie; the real news was that Mala had taken money from their joint account and left him. Art and Françoise cut short a Vermont holiday to drive to him.

In Maus II, in which mountain resort area is the summer bungalow where Art and Françoise join Vladek?

The Catskills bungalow is where Vladek sneaks Art past the guard of a private hotel to join its bingo game. His neighbors there warn Art that the old man can no longer look after himself.

In Maus, which trade does Vladek claim at Auschwitz, though never trained in it, to land safer skilled work?

Tinsmith was a bluff, and the head of the workshop saw through it at once. Vladek bought the man's goodwill with sausage, eggs and bread he got from Polish workers.

In Maus, which trade, picked up in his cousin Miloch's ghetto workshop, wins Vladek gifts of food at Auschwitz?

Shoemaker proved his most useful job: officials preferred to send their footwear to him. When he mended the shoes of Anja's brutal kapo, she was treated far better from then on.

In Maus, in which larger camp two miles from Vladek's barracks at Auschwitz is Anja held?

Birkenau, as Vladek describes it, was a place to wait for the gas chambers rather than a work camp. He volunteered for a work crew sent there just for the chance of seeing his wife.

In Maus, which Hungarian inmate, shielded by her affair with an SS guard, carries notes between Vladek and Anja?

Mancie risked death to pass notes and food between husband and wife. Vladek searched for her after the war to thank her and never found her.

In Maus, which former pastry-shop owner from Sosnowiec reaches Auschwitz with Vladek, in trousers far too large?

Mandelbaum had to hold up his trousers with one hand and carry a shoe in the other, hoping to swap it for one that fit. Vladek got him a belt and proper shoes shortly before he was taken off to work and never seen again.

In Maus, to which camp inside Germany is Vladek shipped by cattle car in the war's final months?

Dachau fed only those who could show a shirt free of lice at mealtime. Vladek traded for a spare shirt, washed it, kept it wrapped in paper and changed into it for every inspection.

In Maus, which disease sweeps through Vladek's last camp and leaves him lying near death in the infirmary?

Typhus was carried by the lice in the barracks straw, and it killed many around him. Vladek remembers stepping on the bodies of the dead in the corridor on his way to the toilet.

In Maus, what does Vladek tie to hooks in a packed cattle car to make himself a hammock?

A blanket slung from the hooks lifted him above the crush, and through a window he could reach snow on the roof. Of perhaps two hundred packed in, only about twenty-five came out alive.

In Maus II, who is Pavel, the Czech Jew and Holocaust survivor Art goes to see at night?

His psychiatrist tells Art that surviving the camps came down to luck, not merit. Pavel also suggests that Vladek felt guilty for outliving so many and passed that guilt on to his son.

In Maus II, what buzzes around Art's head at his drawing table as he broods over the first volume's success?

Flies circle Art as his drawing table sits on a heap of camp victims' bodies, in a chapter subtitled "Time Flies". Fame from the first volume has left him depressed.

In Maus II, what does Vladek do at a grocery store that makes Art and Françoise hide in the car?

Returns opened food, the half-eaten groceries Mala left behind, and walks out with six dollars of goods for one. He won the manager over by describing the camps and his poor health.

In Maus II, Vladek is furious when Françoise stops the car on the way home from shopping to pick up whom?

A Black hitchhiker gets a lift, and Vladek mutters in Polish until the man is gone. When Françoise points out that he was a victim of racism himself, he snaps that it is "not even to compare".

In Maus, to which country do Vladek and Anja move after the war, where Art is born, while awaiting US visas?

Sweden is where Vladek worked his way up from labor jobs to partner in a department store, and where Art was born in Stockholm. The family left for the United States a few years later.

What final image does Art Spiegelman draw at the end of Maus, beneath Vladek's last sleepy words?

His parents' tombstone closes the book, right after a drowsy Vladek calls Art by his dead brother's name: "I'm tired from talking, Richieu." Vladek died before Maus was completed.

Maus first appeared chapter by chapter as an insert in which comics magazine run by Art Spiegelman and his wife?

Raw carried a new chapter as a small insert in each issue from 1980 until the magazine ended in 1991. Only the final chapter of Maus never ran there.

Maus creator Art Spiegelman made a black-on-black Twin Towers cover after September 11 for which magazine?

The New Yorker hired Spiegelman as a contributing artist in 1992, and he stayed for a decade. His wife Françoise Mouly positioned the towers' silhouettes, which can vanish until the page is tilted toward the light.

The three-page 1972 strip that grew into Maus first ran in which underground comic book edited by Justin Green?

Funny Aminals got a three-page tale based on an anecdote about Vladek at Auschwitz. Showing his father the finished strip led to the recorded interviews behind the full book.

In Maus II, what nickname do the US soldiers give Vladek while he keeps house for them after liberation?

Willie was their name for the survivor who made their beds and kept the farmhouse clean in exchange for staying on. After emigrating to the United States he anglicized his own name to William.