http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1065292,00.html
Has anyone else read these books?
I just came across this review of them, which has prompted me to re-read them. They're no less powerful the second time through.
They really should be considered the definitive work on the holocaust as far as I'm concerned. Nothing else I've read on the subject has come anywhere close to it. History books can't really illustrate a subject on the same level. You read about all these colorful events in history and they seem very distant and no matter how horrible, detached from real life. Its also much easier to deny the existance of something you've read about in a history book than something taken from direct personal experience, as Maus is. In a fifty years, when no one who rememberd these events happening is still alive, they will be all the more valuable, ensuring that it won't be relegated to the realm of history, detached from real life.

Yes, I read them a few years ago. One thing I thought was interesting, I realized at some point when I was reading them that I no longer saw the characters as anthropomorphized animals.
They portray the events on a very meaningful scale.

The same happened for me. I think depicting different nationalities as different animals was an interesting and risky artistic choice. I'm surprised it works as well as it did. Seeing cartoon animals, as in a children's book, being subjected to those events, in a very strange way, makes them seem all the more real.

I freaked when I saw your title. Maus were great books!