Was Vladek Spiegelman a true survivor of the holocaust?

As a man who is really into graphic novels and comic books, Maus was obviously a “must read” for me when I found it one year ago. There were many things that called my attention my attention while reading this graphics novel. For example: The story, the character design and the art among others. But definitely the most interesting thing, by far, was the character of Vladek Spiegelman.

In the story, as well as in real life, Vladek was a Jew who survived the holocaust and through the story we see how he managed to stay alive while telling his story to his son, Art, the actual author of the graphic novel. Aside from knowing how Vladek’s life was during the time of the holocaust, we also get to know how his life was in the present, and he is an insufferable man, we see how his attitude makes everyone angry, he has a very conflictive relationship with the people around him, like his son or his wife, Mala (his second wife, after Anja committed suicide)

At this point, one may think that Vladek was just an angry old man, but there is a moment in the story in which Vladek, Art and his wife went to the supermarket because Vladek wanted to go change a half-eaten cereal for a new one, and while he was discussing with the manager, the wife of Art told him that it was a miracle that he survived, but he answers “Uh-huh. But in some ways he didn’t survived” and that makes me wonder, did Vladek really survived? What does it mean to be a survivor?

Well, yes, he is alive, but a experience like that, plus the suicide of Anja, must have left some really deep scars on him, and maybe those scars were the ones that made Vladek like that: an annoying man that nobody can stand due to his attitude and to his neurotic obsessiveness to almost everything. The horror of the holocaust may have been a ghost that chased Vladek during the rest of his life, a ghost that didn’t allow him, in a certain way, to continue with his life. Vladek died in 1982, but his soul may have died much more before than that.