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For anyone who is treating a child of a holocaust survivor, this little book could be required reading. It complements the writings of the Group for the Psychoanalytic Study of the Effect of the Holocaust on the Second Generation (Bergmann and Jucovy, 1982) and the writings of psychoanalysts such as Ilse Grubrich-Simitis (1979, 1984), illustrating many of the symptoms prevalent in holocaust survivors and their children. It is additionally precious as it joins a very small group of publications, the “first person accounts,” since the book's author and illustrator both literally and figuratively tells his own story in graphic detail. In comic strip format, Spiegelman portrays his family and the other Jews as mice, clothed in the style of the 1940s, and depicts the Nazis as cats and the Poles as pigs. Somehow, this technique and format provide enough distance to allow the reader a feeling of safe “other-ness” as he reads and then identifies with the characters.
The author has done such a masterful job that I have felt immersed for days afterward in this grim and desperate world. Additionally, I believe that the book is contributing significantly to my current work with a child of a holocaust survivor, who, incidentally, lent me his copy of the book. The essence of the book, our work, and the difficulty of the children of the holocaust survivors is the impossibility of bridging this particular generation gap, try as we might. We are isolated from the holocaust survivors, no matter what level of personal terror we may experience, be it a life-threatening illness or a chronic psychosis. The holocaust survivors lived through a time when their external world was chronically life-threatening and psychotic.
The format of the book is complex. There are stories within stories. We meet the family as the son visits his father and father's second wife in Queens as he gathers information for his book. Then the events of the war are related through a series of flashbacks. Additionally