Maus Chapter 5

On p. 106 of Maus, third panel from the top, there is a picture of a Nazi guards and Jewish guards working together to round up and exterminate the rest of the Jews. As Vladek says of those collaborators, "They acted so, just like the Germans." Spiegelman's portrait shows the Nazi and the Jewish collaborators wearing identical uniforms, with a few exceptions. Most immediately obvious is the posture of the respective groups. The Nazi stands straight up and is confident--even cheerful-- while the Jewish guards seem remorseful and depressed with hunched backs and downcast eyes. Also remarkable is the varying potency of weaponry used. While the Nazi guard receives a rifle, the Jews merely get sticks, as if to make clear that the Nazi guard trusts the Jewish guards no more than he trusts the Jewish prisoners. Less notably, both sets of guards wear almost identical armbands, in the same places with the same coloring. The only difference is that while the Nazi guard has a swazstika, the Jewish guards are presumably forced to wear the Jewish star instead. What Spiegelman argues is that, while the Nazis accepted (or demanded) help from the Hebrew people and dressed those in identical uniforms as they did themselves, they still treated them as clearly inferior, giving them inferior weaponry and forcing them to wear the Jewish star. To the Nazis, the Jewish help was no more than a means to an end. That end was obvious.