Episode Details

This week, we're diving into Maus—Art Spiegelman's groundbreaking graphic novel that somehow manages to tell a Holocaust survivor's story through… cartoon mice and cats. But don't let the drawings fool you—Maus is raw, layered, and emotionally devastating. It weaves together two timelines: the harrowing experiences of Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew who survives Auschwitz, and the present-day struggles between father and son as Art tries to make sense of trauma, memory, and inheritance. It's part memoir, part history, part deeply human family drama—all told in black-and-white panels that hit harder than most history books ever could. In this episode, we explore how Maus changed the way we talk about the Holocaust—and why it remains one of the most powerful works of modern Jewish literature.