 With the intention of creating a book @-@ length work based on his father 's recollections of the Holocaust Spiegelman began to interview his father again in 1978 and made a research visit in 1979 to the Auschwitz concentration camp , where his parents had been imprisoned by the Nazis . The book , Maus , appeared one chapter at a time as an insert in Raw beginning with the second issue in December 1980 . Spiegelman 's father did not live to see its completion ; he died on 18 August 1982 . Spiegelman learned in 1985 that Steven Spielberg was producing an animated film about Jewish mice who escape persecution in Eastern Europe by fleeing to the United States . Spiegelman was sure the film , An American Tail ( 1986 ) , was inspired by Maus and became eager to have his unfinished book come out before the movie to avoid comparisons . He struggled to find a publisher until in 1986 , after the publication in The New York Times of a rave review of the work @-@ in @-@ progress , Pantheon agreed to release a collection of the first six chapters . The volume was titled Maus : A Survivor 's Tale and subtitled My Father <unk> History . The book found a large audience , in part because it was sold in bookstores rather than in direct @-@ market comic shops , which by the 1980s had become the dominant outlet for comic books . 
