Prisoner B-3087 By Alan Gratz

Stolen Lives

2.8 million Jews were killed in Poland. All were numbed with terror and fear of what would happen next. Pause and think for a moment. What did they feel? What did they fear? Oh wait, you can’t because you would never understand or feel what happened to them and how the Nazis treated the Jews. Instead, those people were persecuted and murdered for nothing more than being who they were. The Holocaust means “great or wholesale destruction by fire” (“Holocaust”), and in the book Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz, a boy named Yanek (age 7) discovers the horror of being a Jew under Hitler’s rule. He and his family mixed with other families worked and lived in camps and ghettos for many years (Gratz 36-43). The Holocaust was the darkest

Nazis forced them from their homes. Yanek’s family was doing well in life. Their family business was doing well. However, when the Nazis invaded Poland Yanek’s family started to lose money because people didn't want bread from a Jew. While the family business was suffering, Yanek learned he could no longer be educated even though education was a core value of his home life. It was at this time that Yanek and other Jews were forced to work in salt mines. This kind of discrimination made Yanek realize that the Nazis didn't care what type of person you were, rather what type of person you

Their new home - concentration camps, the ghettos, a chicken coop, even an apartment - was always covered in the worst kind of filth. Rats and lice were their normal. Their living quarters were never cleaned because work and sleep completed their day. Some were not allowed to sleep in a bed; for example Yanek had to sleep with his family on top of the roof in a frozen chicken coop during harsh winter months. However, when lives are taken for ridiculous reasons, subhuman conditions are at their worst. One prisoner was bitten to death by dogs because he spoke out of line by saying, “Yes Sir,” at the wrong time (Gratz 87). Another Nazi soldier told Yanek that if he didn't finish building a Barack by sunset, he would have a slow death yet to come (Gratz 148). One of the worst things a Nazi did in the book was killing prisoners from a salt mine because there wasn't enough salt dug that day. No one had an answer as to why there wasn’t enough salt and because of this the commanding officer went around the camp killing women and children to show the men they had made a mistake (Gratz 204). Yanek soon learned the false truth that a Jew was not the same as everyone else and he held his head high believing that was the real