 In 1972 , Justin Green asked Spiegelman to do a three @-@ page strip for the first issue of Funny Aminals [ sic ] . He wanted to do one about racism , and at first considered a story with African @-@ Americans as mice and cats taking on the role of the Ku Klux Klan . Instead , he turned to the Holocaust that his parents had survived . He titled the strip " Maus " and depicted the Jews as mice persecuted by die Katzen , which were Nazis as cats . The narrator related the story to a mouse named " Mickey " . With this story Spiegelman felt he had found his voice . 
