Misha Pilsudski, an orphan in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, is not treated as particularly clever. Other street kids mock him for being a runt and for being clueless about the wider world. Yet Misha, who’s never known anything but life on the streets, knows how to be quick, adaptable, and observant in order to survive. As the story goes on, he learns to further develop his supposed weaknesses—especially his small size—in order to adapt to higher-stakes circumstances, helping others who cannot help themselves in the ghetto. His whole life is a story of using limited resources to bounce back and keep going. By portraying the unlikely Misha as ingenious and resilient, Spinelli argues that a person’s weakest traits—even those that others mock—might turn out to be the very ones that position them to rise to the occasion in difficult circumstances, and even to help others.
Even as a young boy, Misha has lifelong experience in creatively adapting to circumstances in order to survive. Misha and fellow street orphan Uri adapt to the circumstances around them in war-torn Warsaw. After routine bombing raids begin, “On some nights we were a city of two. We did not have to snatch. We simply walked into the empty shops of bakers and butchers and grocers and took whatever we pleased and walked out and walked home. We did not run. The streetlights were out.” The city’s catastrophe simply becomes a new mode of survival for the two boys, already used to fending for themselves. As the war makes food scarcer in Warsaw, Misha isn’t deterred, but seeks out new possibilities for stealing food. He remembers, “I had to be patient. […] I learned to look for little children playing outside a large, fine house. When they went back inside, they often forgot to lock the door. In I walked, sometimes right behind the child. […] Some children said nothing. They seemed to think that if I strolled in the door with them, I must belong. I walked straight to the dining room or the kitchen. […] If there was no one or a very young child, I would take my time shopping in the kitchen.” Misha might be teased by other kids for being “stupid” and naïve, but he is observant of the world around him and clever about making the best of his circumstances. When snatching food off the streets no longer works, his awareness of people’s behavior helps him adapt and survive.
In the ghetto, Misha’s supposed weaknesses end up becoming his strengths, enabling him to help others as well as himself. After Misha follows his Jewish friends into the ghetto, he quickly discovers that he can slip in and out of a narrow section of the ghetto’s wall whenever he wants. He starts sneaking out nightly to steal food from the outside world and bring it to his friends inside. He tells the surprised Milgrom family, “‘I can go anywhere.’ I was not boasting, I was simply stating a fact. I had come to love my small size, my speed, my slipperiness. Sometimes I thought of myself as a bug or a tiny rodent, slipping into places that the eye could not even see.” Misha has often been mocked for his small size, but from his experiences as a thief, he’s come to see his size as an asset and even to take pride in it. It allows him to fit into spaces in the world where others literally cannot—and this allows him to dodge authorities, fend for himself, and help those he loves. Through his experiences in the ghetto, Misha realizes a sense of purpose: “Some people died from sickness, some from hunger. There wasn't much I could do about the sickness, but hunger, that was where I came in. Feeding my family—and as much as possible Doctor Korczak's orphans—was what the world had made me for. All the parts—the stealing, the speed, the size, the rash stupidity—came together to make me the perfect smuggler.” Misha discovers that his experiences in life so far, even his weaknesses and struggles, have prepared him to help those who are even more helpless than himself.
After the war, Misha’s need for ingenuity and resilience persists, and he rises to the challenge. Displaced and homeless, he adapts by selling stolen items. Now, though, he discovers that his voice is his greatest asset, not his speed or sneakiness: “For me, it was more about talking than about selling […] up until the end of the war, I had probably not spoken two thousand words in my life. Now you could not shut me up. […] [Words] were free for the taking. No one ever chased me down a road yelling, ‘Stop! Thief! He stole my word!’” Misha finds that the unique experiences and stories he collected during the war are richer fodder than smuggled goods. Perhaps this is because, while Misha’s childhood sneakiness and resourcefulness helped him survive in the short term, helping others and connecting with them through storytelling are sources of resilience that endure for the long term.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Ingenuity, Resilience, and Survival ThemeTracker
Ingenuity, Resilience, and Survival Quotes in Milkweed
More thumping sounds in the distance. "What is that?" I asked him.
“Jackboot artillery," he said.
"What's artillery?"
"Big guns. Boom boom. They're shelling the city." He stared at me. “Who are you?"
I didn't understand the question.
"I'm Uri," he said. “What's your name?”
I gave him my name. "Stopthief."
I had an idea. The next day I snatched two loaves of bread. One I gave to Uri, the other I took to the house of Janina the girl. It had snowed overnight. Brown stubble poked through the white blanket covering the garden. I pushed the snow from the top step. I set the loaf down, knocked on the door, and ran.
The next day I came back to look. The bread was gone.
That was how it started.
One time I entered a house through an unlocked back door. […] I moved through the kitchen and suddenly found myself standing in a doorway, staring at a family of people having dinner around a long table. Food and silver and glass sparkled everywhere. In the middle was a great, golden roasted bird, perhaps a goose or turkey. I must have surprised them, for all movement stopped as they stared at me while I stared at the table—but not for long. As always, I was the first to move. I believe this was the first rule of life that I learned, though it was a twitch in my muscles rather than a thought in my head: Always be the first to move. As long as that happened, they would have to catch up, and I could not be caught.
I told her how I found a low place in the wall and simply stepped over. I added: "I can go anywhere." I was not boasting, I was simply stating a fact. I had come to love my small size, my speed, my slipperiness. Sometimes I thought of myself as a bug or a tiny rodent, slipping into places that the eye could not even see.
The soldiers screamed. With my new armband, I thought: I am Jew now. A filthy son of Abraham. They're screaming at me. I am somebody. I tried to listen well, to hear what they were screaming, but I could not understand much beyond “dirty” and “filthy” and “Jew.”
The screaming never stopped. By now people were falling all over the courtyard, falling and staggering to their feet and falling again. It was easy to tell the people who had not fallen: they were the ones with the highest piles of snow on their shoulders and heads. I could now feel the faint weight of the snow on my head. I wondered how it looked. I took even more pains not to move. I didn't want my snow to fall off.
Some people died from sickness, some from hunger. There wasn't much I could do about the sickness, but hunger, that was where I came in. Feeding my family—and as much as possible Doctor Korczak's orphans—was what the world had made me for. All the parts—the stealing, the speed, the size, the rash stupidity—came together to make me the perfect smuggler.
She stood on tiptoes and held it as high as she could and let it go. It sailed toward the sky.
"That's my angel," she said.
Then they were all around us, milkweed puffs, flying. I picked one from her hair. I pointed. "Look." A milkweed plant was growing by a heap of rubble.
It was thrilling just to see a plant, a spot of green in the ghetto desert. The bird-shaped pods had burst and the puffs were spilling out, flying off. I cracked a pod from the stem and blew into the silk-lined hollow, sending the remaining puffs sailing, a snowy shower rising, vanishing into the clouds.
Now it was Hanukkah time again […] On the first day Mr. Milgrom told me the story of Hanukkah. How long ago the Greeks tried to destroy everything Jewish. ("See, this is not the first time.") How the Jews were outnumbered and had no chance against the Greeks but beat them anyway. How the Jews celebrated by lighting an oil lamp. But the celebration would have to be short because there was only enough oil to last for one day. And then a miracle happened. The oil lasted for eight days.
“And so Hanukkah is eight days when we remember that time, and we remember to be happy and proud to be Jews and that we will always survive. This is our time. We celebrate ourselves. We must be happy now. We must never forget how to be happy. Never forget."
I smacked her. I shouted at her. But I could not change her. I could not understand her moods, her outbursts. I mostly accepted the world as I found it. She did not. She smacked me back and kicked me. In time I found my own best way to deal with her. On many days I went off to a favorite bomb crater and lowered myself into it and licked traces of fat from between my fingers and closed my eyes and remembered the good old days when ladies walked from bakeries with bulging bags of bread.
Then I saw her. […] She was a shadow cut loose, held above the other shadows by a pair of Jackboot arms. She was thrashing and screaming above the silent masses. […] And then the arms came forward and she was flying, Janina was flying over the shadow heads and the dogs and soldiers, her arms and legs turning slowly. She seemed so light, so right for the air […] I thought she would sail forever like a milkweed puff on an endless breeze, and I was running and wishing I could fly with her, and then she was gone, swallowed by the black maw of the boxcar[.]
You were the thing that gave me shape. "But I wasn't even listening," you say. "I don't even remember you." Don't feel bad. The important thing was not that you listened, but that I talked. I can see that now. I was born into craziness. When the whole world turned crazy, I was ready for it. That's how I survived. And when the craziness was over, where did that leave me? On the street comer, that's where, running my mouth, spilling myself. And I needed you there. You were the bottle I poured myself into.
