I read Maus a long time ago. I don't remember anything absurd and ridiculous in there. The author's dad survived, and for the most part, it seems to be a more realistic depiction of the camps. I remember the book mentions only having a little food distributed to them. More recently I have learned that the Germans had a distribution problem due to a lack of fuel. They had plenty of food in France, but they couldn't get it where it needed to be. Later in the war the trains going to the camps were getting bombed. If you think about it, the Germans were trying to ramp up labor to the utter most. They would've been happy to bribe camp detainees to work for food if plenty of food was available.