Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Prisoner B-3087, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Determination and Luck
Anti-Semitism and Cruelty vs. Humanity
Connection vs. Isolation
Coming of Age, Trauma, and Remembrance
Identity vs. Anonymity
Summary
Analysis
When the train arrives at Birkenau, Yanek can smell burning flesh in the air. The train sits for hours before the prisoners are let out. Yanek feels as though this is another form of torture, to drive them to panic or madness. Finally, the door opens and the prisoners are marched toward a big brick building with chimneys. Yanek thinks about how much he’s done, how much he's already survived, only to have it taken all away by the Nazis. He begins to cry, wishing that he had let the Nazis kill him back in the ghetto.
When Yanek arrives at Birkenau, his determination faces its greatest challenge. It is easy to understand why he wishes he had given up: the Nazis’ cruelty in this moment, sending innocent people knowingly to their deaths as they are unable to do anything about it, is unfathomable.
Themes
Yanek and the others are instructed to undress and then herded into the next room with the showerheads. Yanek moves as far away from them as he can. When the doors shut, people start to panic, yelling and cursing and beating on the doors. They wait, but no gas comes. Yanek starts to giggle in hysteria, thinking that the Nazis have finally broke him. He thinks that who lives and dies is completely random. One can “play the game perfectly and still lose, so why bother playing at all?”
It is here that Yanek recognizes how much of one’s survival is contingent upon luck—a thought that fills him with despair. Even if one “plays the game” of trying to appease the Nazis and evade death, random chance can ruin all of one’s efforts in an instant. Yanek knows the injustice of working so hard to survive, only to have one’s life taken away due to a simple bad chance—like Moshe, or the boy who was hanged in Chapter 14. This thought makes him feel hopeless, as he posits that this makes his efforts worthless.
Themes
When the gas still doesn’t come, Yanek moves over to a showerhead and yells at it, daring it to kill him. He thinks that he is ready to die, ready for this all to end. Suddenly, the pipes rattle, but instead of gas, water comes out. Yanek starts to laugh and cry at this reprieve. He thinks, in shock, that he’s alive.
The fact that water comes out of the showers instead of gas is another lucky chance—one so profound that it has the potential to renew Yanek’s faith in life. Even though his survival is contingent upon luck, the fact that he is lucky enough to have made it this far and continued to live could spur him to press on.
Themes
