Emily Keller - Junior
Strength, patience, understanding; I have lived nineteen years and developed very few of these. I read often, discuss much, and hope that through all of these actions I might come out knowing something, yet I still find myself strangely naïve. In fact, as I have studied about the Holocaust this week these things have become strangely more apparent. In fact, while reading Spiegleman’s Maus I and II (after I, I had to read II), I really started to wrestle with the way I understood things. My stomach churned; Artie’s relationship with Vladek seemed almost more upsetting to me than what Vladek described about the Holocaust—that made me feel sick. Even more upsetting was my naïve view that by the end of the book they would learn that a father and son’s love for each other could bring about the patience and understanding they both lacked. Perhaps that is why I could not restrain myself from reading Maus II. Yet, I flipped over the last page and saw that a close, understanding relationship never evolved. This is not to say that Artie does not struggle with his relationship with his father, indeed he does and his psychiatrist seems to hint that it is because of Auschwitz and what Vladek survived, nothing Artie can do will seem like that kind of survival or success.
I could not fall asleep, this led me to understand that reading about the Holocaust was not quite a fantastic choice for pre-bedtime reading, but more than that, I was struggling with something and I was not quite sure what it was. Then I began to understand a little more. It is hard for me to express what I am thinking and feeling, for I fear that though I would never want to be insensitive, when I write about sensitive subjects, I certainly do not have the finesse and poise to do it as well as Eli Wiesel or Primo Levi. Nevertheless, I have been called to write for this class and so I will do my best.
It soon became clear that I have fallen party to turning the victims and survivors of the Holocaust into saints. As Primo Levi discussed, “It is naïve, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism sanctifies its victims: on the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself, and this all the more when they are available, blank, and lacking a political or moral armature” (Levi, 40). I studied the Holocaust in my psychology class in high school. We watched films such as Schindler’s List and Life is Beautiful and we went to the Jewish Community Center’s Holocaust museum. It was not that I could not believe such a vicious system could bring its victims back to a primitive nature. On some level, I knew that some people would hurt, maybe even kill others to save themselves, but that could only have been a precious few, right? Maybe that is due to the movies I saw, or maybe it is due to the lack of thought I gave the situation. Nevertheless, while I read Primo Levi’s article I was shocked to think that he said survivors today are not these holy, almost above human people, they participated in that “infernal system” and that is why they and not others are here today. I thought, how can he defame them in this way, these innocent people that endured such horrendous years that I cannot even fathom? It became clearer and clearer through class discussion that I was simply naïve, I was someone who vilified the Nazis (and rightly so) but let the Jews become a sort of holy group, those who had so much wrong done to them that they could do no wrong. Now let me clarify, although this illusion has been shattered, I have neither lost any respect nor regard for them, these victims. In fact, I learned from Levi that though they may seem more human to me now than otherworldly and saintly, I still cannot understand what they went through and what I would have done in their place. Indeed he says, “Each individual is so complex that there is no point in trying to foresee his behavior, all the more so in extreme situations; nor is it possible to foresee one’s own behavior”(Levi, 60).
As I close, I also want to show how I began to understand my incredible initial discomfort with Spiegleman’s Maus I and II. I think that I had placed Vladek in this group of revered survivors—those who can do no wrong and must be treated as such. Even though the whole work portrays less than ideal sides of Vladek, I still thought that no matter how he acts he deserves utter respect and love because of who he is and what he has suffered. And although I am realizing that the survivors are not these saintly demigods I had made them out to be, I am still grappling with what that means. I am still uncomfortable with Artie and Vladek’s relationship, and maybe that is rightfully so. I am also still learning strength, patience, and understanding—and realizing that though the survivors may have mastered these skills in their time of suffering, they are still human and should be understood and loved despite the fact that I so long expected them to be so holy.
