How is vladek able to help the kapo

Vladek breaks off the story at this point to show Art where the safety deposit box is located at the bank. Later, Vladek picks up the story in Vladek and Anja have gone into hiding in Sosnowiec, first staying with a Polish woman, Mrs. Kowka, then on the farm of Mrs.

When Mrs. Motonowa is searched by the Gestapo, Vladek and Anja return to Mrs. Vladek and Anja pay the smugglers, but on the way to Hungary, the smugglers betray them to the Nazis. They are taken to Auschwitz, where they are separated. Part II begins with Vladek in his summer home in the Catskills. Mala has left him. Vladek continues his story when Art arrives.

At Auschwitz, Vladek sticks with his friend Mandelbaum. They are treated brutally at the camps. At Auschwitz, Vladek meets a Catholic priest, who gives him hope when he shows Vladek how lucky his prisoner number is. Vladek gets some favors by giving English lessons to the Polish Kapo. He also works at a tin shop. While at Auschwitz, Vladek is able to smuggle food and messages to Anja, who is at Birkenau. By this time, Vladek is very skinny. It comes time for a selection, and Vladek hides in the bathroom until it is over.

Luckily, nobody finds him. Vladek is moved back to the tinshop with Yidl after the "black work". Nov 15, When the Russians got near, the Nazis wanted to pack up everything and take it to Germany, so they had all the tinsmen work on disassembling the facilities they used to kill the Jews. While he works, he is given a description of what happened to the bodies from a Jew who had been working there to clean up.

Nov 30, When the Russians are almost at the camp, the Germans get ready to evacuate. Vladek and a few friends plan to hide in a laundry room to be found when the Russians arrive. However, someone then comes and tells the group that the Nazis plan to burn and blow up the camp, and they have to march with the Nazis. Dec 1, The Nazis force the prisoners to march, and they all leave Auschwitz, Nazis shooting anyone who can't march. Dec 8, Vladek sees a man act in the way his neighbor's dog did when he was a child.

Also, he sees friends try to bribe the guards into not shooting them when they try to run, but the guards break their promises. Dec 11, After the march, the prisoners arrive in a smaller camp within Germany, and are herded onto a train for cows.

Vladek hangs his blanket on two ceiling hooks and sits down for the trip. Dec 18, The train goes somewhere for a while, and eventually it just stopped. Vladek was able to get water from snow on top of the train, and he traded it for sugar. After a while, the Germans opened the cars and took out the dead. After aother week, the red cross gives everyone food, and the trains are now on their way to Dachau. Feb 3, It is very crowded in the camp, because all of the Jews that had been prisoners are being moved into Germany to hide them from the Allied powers.

The prisoners had to sit on straw infested with live carrying typhus. Vladek keeps himself healthy by doing gymnastics and trying to bathe often. Vladek has a dream in which his grandfather tells him that he will be set free on Parshas Truma a specific Saturday named for the section of the Torah that is read that day.

Several months later on Parshas Truma, Vladek and the other Jewish prisoners are sent back to Poland, but the train bypasses Sosnowiec and travels miles farther to Lublin. After some men bribe the guards, Vladek is released and travels back to Sosnowiec.

He visits his parents and reunites with Anja; by now, Richieu is two and half years old. Confused and incredulous, Artie leaves. Jews are given ration books with which to purchase food, but the limited number of coupons barely provide enough food for one person, so Vladek starts buying and bartering goods on the black market.

He obtains a work permit from a tin shop, where he learns skills that will later help him at Auschwitz. A year later, in , the Nazis start rounding up Jews and sending them away on trains even if they have proper papers. Vladek thinks about hiding Richieu until the war is over, but Anja talks him out of it. A notice is posted and all of the Jews are moved into a ghetto. Vladek cries as he tells Artie this, saying that he was similarly involved in the black market, and they could have turned him in to save themselves.

Later, all of the Jews in Sosnowiec are told to report to the nearby Dienst stadium to have their papers verified. She tells him that her family was also at the stadium, and they were eventually killed in Auschwitz.

Artie receives a worried call from Mala, who says that Vladek is going to try to clean the drainpipes despite his frail health.

When Artie visits a week later, Vladek seems upset. When Artie asks Mala whether his father is mad about the roof, she tells Artie that Vladek recently read Prisoner on the Hell Planet , a comic that Artie drew years earlier. Artie is dressed in prison stripes throughout. One day, months after his release from a mental hospital, Artie finds a crowd of people outside his house.

A doctor who lives nearby tells Artie that his mother committed suicide. At the funeral, Vladek climbs onto the coffin, wailing. He accuses his mother of committing the perfect crime: murdering herself and leaving him to take the blame. Vladek joins Artie and Mala in the kitchen, and Artie apologizes to his father for the comic. Vladek says that it brought up painful memories of Anja, but it was good that Artie found a way to release his emotions.

As Artie and Vladek walk to the bank, Vladek resumes his story after the stadium selection. In , all of the remaining Jews in Sosnowiec are forced to move to Srodula, a nearby village.

In Srodula, Vladek and the other Jews are escorted by guards to work in German workshops each day; Vladek and his nephew Lolek work in a woodworking shop, and Anja and her sister Tosha work in a clothing factory. This is the last time that Vladek ever sees Richieu. In the spring, the Nazis take 1, more people—mostly children—from Srodula to Auschwitz. The Germans arrive to transport the entire ghetto of Zawiercie to Auschwitz, and Tosha, wanting to spare them from a terrible fate at Auschwitz, poisons Richieu, herself, and all of her own children before they can be sent to the concentration camp.

Other Jews, whose hiding places were not as good, were found and taken away. By the end of July , only 1, people are left in Srodula: the rest have been deported to Auschwitz.

Vladek and the other remaining families live in an attic bunker and only leave to look for food. One day they help a stranger who stops in their house, and the next day, the Gestapo show up and force everyone out of their hiding place; it turns out that the stranger had been an informant. While awaiting a van that will transport them to Auschwitz, Vladek talks to his cousins Jakov and Haskel; Haskel is the chief of the Jewish police and still has some freedom and influence.

Vladek gives Haskel all of his valuables, and Haskel helps Vladek, Anja, and their nephew Lolek escape. One day while Vladek is on work detail, he ends up burying the body of the informant; Haskel had arranged to have him killed. In the present day, Vladek tells Artie that Haskel was a crook who gained favor with the Gestapo by playing cards with them and losing large amounts of money on purpose.

While Vladek and Artie walk to the bank, Vladeck starts coughing and has to sit down. As he rests, he tells Artie about Pesach, another crook who worked with Haskel. The story shifts back to the past.

In , almost everyone has been taken to Auschwitz. Haskel, Pesach, and their friend Miloch still work in Srodula, but have plans to avoid being sent to a concentration camp. Her parents, child, and nephew have all been taken from her.

Vladek tries to convince her that he still needs her. Anja and Vladek end up hiding in the bunker with ten other people, including a baby.

Pesach comes to visit from his bunker and tells them that his group is bribing the guards to let them leave town. Their fears prove justified: Pesach and those who leave with him are killed by the guards. The few who remain behind wait until the town is empty, put on nice clothes, and join the Polish citizens walking past the town to work, pretending to be Polish. In the present, Artie and Vladek arrive at the bank, where Vladek has an extra key to his safety deposit box made for Artie.

Vladek shows Artie jewelry that he recovered after World War II, including a diamond ring that he originally gave to Anja. Vladek tells Artie that Mala wants all of his money; when Vladek dies, he wants Artie to take everything in the deposit box before Mala can get it.

Vladek breaks down and cries, heartbroken and missing Anja. Artie is uncomfortable with the conversation but agrees that his father is too concerned with money. Artie follows Vladek to the garden to hear more of the story.

Testimony to this effect can be read on the Alphabet of Auschwitz, Clothing and Nakedness page. On this page, Olga Lengyel relates a story very similar to one that Vladek tells in the Mauschwitz chapter. Vladek explains how life was made easier by simply having clothes that fit as he tells the story of his friend Mandelbaum.

Mandelbaum was a very wealthy man before he was brought to Auschwitz. Like the others, he was robbed of his possesions upon entering the camp and given clothes and shoes which did not fit. In fact, his situation was so bad that he had two shoes of different sizes, one of which he had to carry in his hand because his foot would not fit in it. His pants were too large for him, so he had to hold them up with his other hand. Mandelbaum lost his spoon, another item that was issued to the prisoners, becuase of his clothing situation.