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“Prisoners what worked there poured gasoline over the live ones and the dead ones. And the fat from the burning bodies they scooped and poured again so everyone could burn better.”
Near the end of Book II, Chapter 2, Vladek is telling Artie what happened at Auschwitz as the Russians advanced and the Nazis tried to hide the evidence of what they had done. His words are matter of fact, showing no hint of emotion. The accompanying image, however, is one of the starkest depictions of anguish in the text. We see a handful of mice, their noses pointing at the sky and their mouths open in howls of pain. Bright white flames surround them. Throughout Maus, Spiegelman uses a simplified cartoon style in his depictions of the animal characters. This simplified style exaggerates the emotion on the faces of the burning mice, ironically pointing to the humanity of the Nazi’s victims. The contrast of Vladek’s impassive description and the agony of the image point to the efficiency with which the Nazis killed people in the concentration camps.
