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Summary
The next morning in the Catskills, Vladek repeatedly tries to give Artie food, but Artie isn’t hungry. Vladek says that ever since the war, he hates to waste food. Artie sarcastically tells him to keep the food in case Hitler ever comes back. After he apologizes, they drive to the grocery store, and Artie mentions that he read about a revolt in Auschwitz where prisoners who worked in the gas chamber killed three S.S. men. Vladek says that the prisoners were later hanged, along with anyone who helped them.
Vladek continues his story. The prisoners hear loud explosions when the front is within twenty-five miles of Auschwitz, but before the camp is liberated, the guards force them to march all night into Germany. Along the way, many prisoners die of exhaustion or are shot by the guards. After reaching the camp Gross-Rosen, 200 prisoners are packed into cattle cars so tightly that many suffocate, and many others starve. By the time the train stops in Dachau, only 25 of the 200 men have survived.
The narrative briefly shifts back to the present day. Artie and Françoise watch from the car as Vladek argues with the manager of the grocery store, trying to return food that has been opened. Artie feels embarrassed, but Françoise says that they should extend their stay in the Catskills, since Vladek is clearly in bad shape.
Vladek’s story begins again. In Dachau, the Nazis are consolidating all of the remaining prisoners. Conditions are horrible, and Vladek and the other prisoners are kept in lice-infested barracks. Vladek intentionally injures his hand so that he can go to the infirmary, where conditions are slightly better and there is food. Once out of the infirmary, Vladek meets a French prisoner (depicted as a frog), and the two become friends. Since the French prisoner is not Jewish, he’s allowed to receive food packages from his family, and he shares with Vladek when he’s able to. Prisoners have to be lice-free to receive soup from the guards, and there are lice everywhere. Vladek and the French prisoner trade food for extra clothes, so that they can hide their lice-ridden shirts and pass inspection to receive soup every day.
Vladek eventually contracts typhus and becomes very sick. Late at night, when he goes to the bathroom, he has to walk on top of all of the dead bodies that are piled in the lavatory. He becomes too weak to eat, but he trades his food portions for help getting to the bathroom. After Vladek recovers a little, he is chosen to be exchanged in Switzerland as a prisoner of war. With help from people in the infirmary, Vladek leaves Dachau and boards a train to Switzerland.
In the present, Françoise pulls over on the way back from the grocery store to pick up an American hitchhiker (depicted as a dog person). While driving, Vladek mutters in Polish that he cannot believe that Françoise let a Black person in the car. Once they’ve dropped off their passenger and are back on the road, Vladek tells Françoise that he had to watch the hitchhiker to make sure that he didn’t steal the groceries in the back seat. Françoise asks how Vladek can be so racist after all of his experiences, noting that Vladek’s prejudices against Black people echo those the Nazis held against Jews. Vladek insists that Black people really do steal, and Artie tells her it is hopeless to argue.
Analysis
The motif of food and hunger continues through Chapter Three. In the present timeline, Vladek says that he cannot waste food at all since World War II and the events in his story of surviving Dachau illustrate the trauma of prolonged hunger for Vladek. As Vladek describes it, people in the camp were so hungry they would fight “like wild animals” over a spilled drop of soup. The comparison to animals recalls the animal metaphor that runs through Maus and highlights that the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews was so dehumanizing that they behaved like animals to survive. The chapter ends with Vladek offering to make a meal from the new groceries he got, in exchange for returning opened packages to the store, gesturing at the importance of food when it comes to human connection and caring.
During the long march from Auschwitz, Vladek describes how a prisoner’s death was just like that of a rabid dog Vladek had seen killed as a boy. Vladek marvels that a person reacts just like an animal. This scene demonstrates the extent to which the concentration camps had robbed the Jews and other prisoners of their humanity. Simultaneously, comparing the dying prisoner to a dog reminds us that the prisoners are human and not animals, not mice.
Over the course of this chapter, Vladek’s survival depends on luck, physical strength, resourcefulness, and determination. Vladek says he was lucky to still be physically strong, though his physical strength is in part due to his past ability to save and trade resources consistently enough to eat more regularly and better than most other concentration camp prisoners. Vladek’s physical strength helps him earn an extra bowl of soup, furthering bolstering that strength. While on the train to Dachau, Vladek uses his limited resources to create a sling to suspend himself above the others, thus saving himself from being trampled to death. This perch also gives him access to the snow outside, which he eats to stay hydrated and is ultimately able to trade for sugar. Again, Vladek’s resourcefulness prevents him from starving to death. In Dachau, Vladek trades chocolate and bread for an extra shirt, and this extra shirt guarantees that he will never be denied food for having lice. Even when Vladek is nearly dying of typhus, he saves his food and trades it for assistance getting to the bathroom and to the train that helps him escape the camp. Vladek is lucky enough to meet the right people and smart and resourcefulness enough to turn even difficult situations his way, allowing him to survive.
In the frame story, the comic structure allows Spiegelman to show how the past affects the present. Artie asks Vladek about the prisoners who attacked S.S. officers and blew up a crematorium. A panel shows the car Artie, Vladek, and Françoise are in driving through some trees. The feet of the hanged prisoners dangle over the scene. The panel is a visual illustration of how the events of the past hang over the events in the present, much as Vladek’s inability to waste food in the present is a reflection of his own personal history.
The chapter closes with an illustration of Vladek’s own racism. Both Françoise and Artie are disgusted by the stereotypes Vladek expresses about Black people, and he uses a derogatory Yiddish word for a Black person. Artie’s inclusion of this scene points to his previously stated determination to present an accurate portrait of his father, including his flaws and contradictions. As much as Vladek was a victim of the Holocaust and its genocidal racist logic, he believes racist stereotypes about other people himself. In other words, Maus is not a story of heroes and villains, though Vladek is often heroic and the Nazis are often villainous. Maus is a complex story of survival and its costs, up to and including the ways survival can make a person bitter and sometimes cruel.
