Maus II

I have started reading Part 2 of Maus by Art Spiegelman. This second volume focusses on life in the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

The next time you think you have problems to deal with, imagine being pulled out of your house at the point of a gun, being shoved into the back of a truck without windows, traveling for indefinite hours in the freezing winter without warm clothes and without access to bathrooms, being hustled out at an unknown location at night, being separated from your spouse, being told to line up either on the left or on the right, not knowing which side would be marched off towards the 'chimneys', being taken to a large hall where gun-toting SS men asked you to strip and hand over your papers and valuables, being told to go to the showers, not knowing if water was going to come out of the shower heads or Zyklon-B, being subjected to the humiliation of someone shaving your head and tattooing a prisoner number on your forearm, being handed prison uniforms that were too big, being given no belt or string for your over-sized trousers causing you to hold up your trousers with one hand all the time, being given wooden shoes or shoes without shoe-laces, being whipped when you asked for a string, being shoved into sleeping quarters where you are assigned one bed amongst three people even when half the beds are empty, being assigned to the job of moving dead bodies from the gas chambers to the cremation ovens, being marched to the mess hall while some of your comrades are shot for sport, being fed one piece of bread with watery soup, being made to scrub the floor with your clothes and then being marched to your sleeping quarters where you find out that more inmates have arrived and you now have to share your bed with more people.

The next time you are complaining about something, think about how big your problems really are.