For those that don't know, "Maus" is an outstanding graphic novel written by Art Spiegelman that tells the story of his parents survival as Polish Jews during the Holocaust. The story is relayed to the author by his father directly and is told as a part of a frame narrative that also tells us about the author's strained relationship with his father.
Vladek, Art's father, starts the story by telling us about his upbringing and courtship of Art's mother (something he asks his son not to put in the book.) His story goes on to cover the length of WWII, the Holocaust and its aftermath. We see Vladek being drafted into the Polish Army right before the invasion and being interned as a POW before eventually being released. We are told of the tragic story regarding their firstborn son that perished during the Holocaust, their time in the ghetto, remaining hidden when the Germans cleared the ghetto, emerging from hiding and attempting to conceal their identities and finally their deportation to Auschwitz following their capture by the Gestapo during a sting operation where they were posing as human traffickers that would get them out of Poland.
During their time in hiding after surviving the ghetto, Vladek (who spoke German) mentions that when using public transportation he would ride in the sections reserved for the Germans rather than those reserved for the Poles. He does this out of a believe that the Poles would identify him as a Jew right away. This always struck me as odd. Especially since at that time he was hiding in plain sight ostensibly under the guise of being a ethnic Pole. Was he just being paranoid or were the two communities so different from one and other that he would've stuck out had he been in the close proximity with Poles that comes with public transportation?
To clarify, I'm not looking for alleged physical differences that the prejudiced claim exist. I think the Nazi authorities unknowingly using the likeness of a soldier with Jewish ancestry on recruiting posters pretty easily debunks that idea.
Rather, were the ethnically Polish and Jewish communities so separated from one and other at the time that blending in would be particularly difficult? Were there linguistic differences that would be obvious to those alive at the time? Obviously the Jewish community primarily spoke Yiddish, but Vladek was fluent in Polish, German, Yiddish and English at the time of the Holocaust. Something that is a major plot point in the novel and a huge factor in his survival.
In case it's relevant, Spiegelman is originally from the city of Częstochowa but moves to Sosnowiec after his marriage to the author's mother. Could he have a particular accent that would stick out? Could the Jews of these areas be more insular as opposed to those from the major cities of Warsaw or Krakow?
I don't know why, but the idea that he felt safer riding with the Germans as opposed to the Poles always stuck out to me. We read the novel in school and for whatever reason I was thinking about it this morning and was hoping to finally understand the reason he felt this way.
In Nazi occupied countries persecuted Jews divided on two groups. One group were Jews who had so called "good look", which means they didn't look any different than people of other ethnicties, for example Roman Polański, who was a blonde boy, was hiding in Polish family as just one of their kids. And there was the other group with so called "bad look", Jews that had more facial features characteristic for Ashkenazi Jews, they looked more middle eastern than Slavic fellow countrymen. For example Władysław Szpilman wasn't able to blend into outside of the ghetto crowd, because his look was signaling him out. In case of Szpilman it also didn't help he was well-known musician in Warsaw.
Both Szpilman and Polański were from fully assmilated families of Jewish origins, situation of Spiegelmans was similiar.
It seems that Władysław Spiegelman was able to walk on the street unrecognised, but his look wasn't exactly "good". Germans were not familiar with central European Jews, population of Jews was much smaller in Germany, they didn't live in such ethnically mixed society, and the difference weren't that obvious for them, as for Poles and Jews, that were living alongside for years.
One of the main strategy of survival for Jews who were living outside of the ghetto was to act boldly, not to make an impression they are trying to hide, not to be looked at, because it would make them even more visible, the goal was to blend, act as any other. It seems also that Spiegelman knew German language fluently, so he could pretend to be volksdeutsch.
There was a risk that if he would enter "non-German" part of the tramcar, some Poles would recognise him as possible Jew and point out him, so he would be put into ghetto. It seems that he believed that if he wold act boldly and enter German part, acting as German, the risk was lower, because for Germans he wasn't looking much different. Of course there was also a risk that Germans could check his papers and then it would be clear that he isn't a volksdeutsch, because such information was inlcuded in personal documents. But it seems that Germans in Spiegelman city wasn't doing it routinely, so he thought the risk was lower to act that way.
