Rego Park, N.Y.C. 1958 Summary

Artie Spiegelman, the author, artist, and principle narrator, uses the medium of a graphic text—a comic book—to relate the biographical memoir of Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, his parents. The Spiegelmans are Jews, originally from Poland, who survive the Nazi Holocaust and internment at Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenua, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, Ravensbrück, and other concentration camps. After the war the Spiegelmans lived briefly in Stockholm before emigrating to the United States of America and settling in Rego Park, New York. The graphic text uses the extended allegory of anthropomorphized mice—Maus in German—to represent Jews, cats to represent Germans, and other suitable animals to represent other nationalities or ethnicities.

Artie Spiegelman, the narrator and author, remembers skating to school as a child and having his skate malfunction. Instead of waiting for...