Art focuses his narrative on both his Father's experiences in the War and the relationship they share. While it is a moving and important narrative of its own right, it can not be considered truly valuable unless it represents a broad commonality of experience. Granted, Art probably feels some of the effects of being a survivor more acutely than do many of his generation. But, the same sentiments usually exist in some form. The web site Cybrary of the Holocaust contains many interesting and revealing stories of children of survivors. These stories reveal that like Art, these children do like a life that is very much aware of the history of the Holocaust.

One of the most frequent themes in the lives of the children of survivors is the desire to keep the memory alive. The life of Joseph Korn is one such example. Joseph now lives in Augusta, Ga where he recently edited and published Abe's Story, a collection of his Father's memoirs. Joseph had been a successful businessman in the autoparts market. Yet, their was this sense of having neglected something vitally important. When it became possible to do so, Joseph sold his company to focus all of his attention on the compilation of his Father's memoirs. This brought a sense of history and completeness that was necessary for Joseph to feel that he had done his part to keep the story alive.

A related problem and experience is the difficulty of getting parent's to share the events. Mark Melnik writes ,"I learned very little from my parents until adulthood. I heard only snippets and vague statements about "the evil out there." At around age 30, I began to ask specific factual questions and, lo and behold, I learned more in the next seven years than I had in my entire life before then." We see an example of the unspoken presence of the Holocaust as a force dominating children's experiences. Even though his parents never made a central issue of their experience, Mark was still very aware of the impact and the power of the Holocaust as a child. Even when parents don't try, they can not avoid having their children's lives dominated by the past.

We can conclude that Art's experiences are not atypical for the child of a survivor. Art's life is defined by a desire to get a story out of his Father in the hopes of preserving the events for all time. This expanded applicability makes the story in MAUS even more relevant to our understanding of the Holocaust.

Click here to return to the main page or here to go to the introduction.