“But for the moment, I was left alone with my thoughts . . . Menopausal Depression Hitler did it! Mommy!”

These words appear in Prisoner on the Hell Planet, which appears n Book I, Chapter Five. Artie wrote and drew Prisoner on the Hell Planet in 1972 and reproduced it in Maus in its entirety. The image shows a tangle of images interwoven with the words including Anja’s dead body in a bathtub, a pile of dead bodies in a concentration camp, an image of Anja reading to Artie before bed, a close up of an arm with an Auschwitz tattoo cutting the wrist of another arm, and Artie wearing a striped concentration camp uniform with his head in his hand. Anja dies by suicide in 1968 and leaves no note. In this moment, Artie is trying to understand her reasons. The images depict the many traumas she survived, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, but ultimately show that the cost of that survival was too much for her to bear. The image further suggests that the cost is also too much for Artie to bear, as he depicts himself as a prisoner of his mother’s trauma.

“I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through! . . . I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did.”

Artie says this to Francoise at the beginning of Book II, Chapter 1. They are driving on the highway to the Catskills to take care of Vladek, whose wife Mala has just left him. Artie makes mention periodically in Maus of his own survivor’s guilt. He knows his parents suffered an incomprehensible trauma during the Holocaust and feels guilty that he did not have to also. Though Anja and Vladek survived, the trauma of the Holocaust marked them. Artie never feels like he can connect with them because he simply cannot understand what happened.

“Great – Have another heart attack! Look, you’ll just have to pay a bit more for heat a few days longer.”

Artie says this to Vladek at the end of Book II, Chapter 4. He and Vladek have just gone through a cigar box filled with old photos of Anja and her family. Vladek feels a stab of pain in his chest and has to lie down. The picture shows Artie with his hands up like he doesn’t know what to say, and Vladek lies on the couch groaning. This moment shows the physical cost of survival for Vladek in that he literally has a broken heart. It also suggests that he is sick because he always pushes himself to do just one more task and save just a little more money. Vladek’s heart is broken because he has just catalogued many family members who died in World War II but also because his own survival through past traumas push him to never relax and let down his guard.