Yanek Gruener is a 10-year-old boy living in
Kraków, Poland in 1939 when
Adolf Hitler invades, at the beginning of World War II. Once the
Nazi Party takes over the city, Yanek and his family are forced to live in the
Krakow Ghetto, with other
Jewish families. For three years, Yanek lived in cramped small two-bedroom apartments housing 20 people of different families, watching other families and loved ones being taken to different concentration camps, knowing they were not returning. When Yanek was thirteen years old, he and his uncle were taken to the
Plaszow Concentration Camp, where they worked in the tailor shops making uniforms for the
German soldiers and fellow
prisoners. After the death of his uncle, he was employed through the concentration camp to work in an
enamelware factory by a man named
Oskar Schindler. Sadly, he was transferred away from Plaszow three months before Schindler started to save the Jewish prisoners who worked in his factory. After one year in the Plaszow Concentration Camp, Yanek was moved to the
Wieliczka Salt Mine and worked in the mines for a short time until he was moved to
Trzebinia Concentration Camp. The Nazi soldiers and
Kapos treated the prisoners like a game. Yanek spent his days digging pits for his fellow prisoners when they inevitably died. After less than a year in Trzebinia, Yanek and the other prisoners were shoved into
cattle cars and transported to
Birkenau Concentration camp. Once he arrived, Yanek and the other Jewish prisoners were led into the shower. Believing they were to die, they started to yell at the guards, telling them not to waste time and kill them already. Instead, they were met with water, after which they were given new clothes and shoes. Yanek got his B-3087 tattoo. While in Birkenau, Yanek stood with a 13 year old boy during his
bar mitzvah and worked to keep himself alive until he was moved from Birkenau to its sister camp,
Auschwitz. Yanek and his fellow prisoners were forced to walk to his sixth concentration camp, Auschwitz, only stopping along the way to pick up more Jewish prisoners. There, he was moved to the right by
Dr. Mengele along with the rest of the men. After surviving Auschwitz, he was part of a two-week-long death march to
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Shortly after arriving, he was forced back into a cattle car and sent to
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. There, due to their poor health and weak bodies, the Nazi official ordered all the Jewish prisoners not to work for a week and instead eat and regain their strength. Shortly after that, he was shoved back into a cattle car and sent off to
Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Unlike the other concentration camps, Buchenwald was open to the public as a zoo, ran by
Karl Koch and his wife, nicknamed "
the witch of Buchenwald". After surviving the witch of Buchenwald, Yanek was once again placed in a cattle car and sent to
Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp, where he lost a button on his jacket and got more than 20 lashes before he was sent on his second death march. This time he was sent to
Dachau Concentration camp, his tenth one, where he was eventually saved from imprisonment by American soldiers. == Themes ==