Mice
are seen as plague everywhere, and obviously no one wants to take care
of them frightened of getting one of their infections. Besides, mice come from
the streets, from the underground, and sort of interrupt with the normal
development of life... Can you imagine how terrible would be to compare mice
with people? Well, it happened.
This
comparison did happen during the Holocaust, when Nazis had the idea of a superior
human race, in which Jews did not fit in and were almost eliminated through
horrific crimes and genocide.
The
German word “Maus” in the title of this comic means “Mouse”, what’s more these
two words sound quite similar. This similarity has the intention of making the
reader relate these two words, and make a comparison between Jews and mice,
being both a plague.
In
this way, Spiegelman wants to show how certain human beings were diminished
during that time, at the point of being seen as a pest, and therefore killed
and tortured. Nevertheless, what happens here is that the “plague” and the
people lose: one becomes a victim and the other become murderers.
So,
after all and after have read the comic the question that comes to mind is: “Were
Jews really the plague during that time?” If we take into account what really
happened and what Nazis were trying to find (a pure human race), the mice were
not exactly the Jews...
The relationship you just have made has helped me a lot with one of the concerns I had of this graphic novel. Regarding your final question, at the beginning of this terrible movement that aimed to exterminate all Jews, from my point of view, Nazis were not the plague, however, as more people were assassinated, we could say that Nazis were actually the "plague". But if we go further and think deeper of all of this, for Nazis, not only Jews were the plague, but all the different minorities that were living in Germany and its surroundings, like black and homosexual people. The thing is that the Jews were evidently not a minority group.
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