Student Question
Describe the opening of Chapter 3 and Vladek's experiences in the war and POW camp in Maus. How does he return to Sosnowiec and what are the concluding insights about him and Art?
Quick answer:
Chapter 3 opens with Art, Vladek, and Mala having a meal, highlighting Vladek's strictness about food. Vladek's father tried to prevent him from joining the army by starving him. In the war, Vladek is captured and sent to a POW camp where Jews face harsh conditions. He dreams of escaping on Parshas Truma, which comes true, leading to his release and return to Sosnowiec by bribing Germans. The chapter underscores Vladek’s resilience and complex relationship with Art.
I will answer some of your questions and let you answer some as well. Art opens chapter three with a meal between Art, Vladek, and Mala. The reader learns that Vladek would always make Art eat everything on his plate but Anja, Art's mother, would secretly serve him something he liked.
When Vladek is recruited to join the army as a young man, his father starves him (by only allowing him to eat salted herring and allowing him no water) and prevents him from sleeping and eating right before the exam so he can get out of serving in the army. During the war, Vladek is forced to shoot at Germans and kills one of them, and he is then taken prisoner and sent to a prisoner of war camp near Nuremberg, where Jews are separated from other prisoners. Vladek and the other Jews are given very little food in the camps and are forced to carry out hard labor. They suffer from frostbite and lice. Art dreams that his dead grandfather comes to him and says that he will escape from this place on the day of Parshas Truma. A Parsha is a section from the Torah, and Parshas Truma is read just one week during the year; during this time, Vladek is released from the camp in a systematic way and sent back to Poland. He is sent back to Lublin, not to his hometown, but the Germans are bribed to release the prisoners to Jewish homes—to people who could claim the Jews as relatives. Vladek was released to a friend of his uncle. Vladek tells a train man that he was in a German prisoner of war camp and, dressed in his soldier's uniform, he does not tell the train man that he is a Jew. The man allows Vladek to return to Sosnowiec and to hide in a compartment on the train. I will allow you to think about how this chapter concludes.
In chapter 4, to survive, Vladek gets a pass from Ilzecki that allows him to go about freely, and he collects merchandise from customers who owed him money from before the war. The conditions in the town are increasingly dangerous, as the Nazis begin to round up Jews. Ilzecki proposes that Vladek send his son to the same Polish family that is hiding his own son, but Vladek's family does not agree to do this. While Ilzecki and his wife do not survive the war, their son does survive. In contrast, Vladek's son, Richieu, does not survive. The Jews dealing in black market goods are hanged, and Vladek reacts with sadness. Even many years later, he cries thinking about it. Anja and her family hide her grandparents, who are about 90. Vladek says that some Jews thought they could save themselves by turning in other Jews. If you look at the end of chapter 4, you can answer the last three questions.
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