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
After a few months at Birkenau, Yanek is transferred to Auschwitz because they need more workers. On the prisoners’ march to Auschwitz, they stop at the train station, where new Jews—with real clothes, luggage, and children—arrive. Yanek feels deeply sorry for the new arrivals, who look at the gaunt prisoners with wide eyes. Yanek thinks that these people will soon look like him.
Comparing the new arrivals with the prisoners like Yanek helps Gratz illustrate the extent of the toll of the Nazis’ brutality. Providing readers with a glimpse into each group’s reaction to each other shows how the new prisoners still have their innocence and their humanity, in contrast to Yanek, who is much wearier and dehumanized.
Themes
The prisoners are then marched to Auschwitz and then assembled in the yard. One Auschwitz prisoner tells them quietly that young people should say that they are 18, in good health, and have a trade. The family in front of Yanek in line, who have just arrived off the train, don’t understand the advice. The Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele, interviews the man, who explains that his wife had pneumonia recently and that his son is only nine. Mengele tells the man to go to the right and the woman and boy to go to the left. The woman and boy protest, but soldiers keep them apart.
Given how Yanek was separated from his own family, it’s likely that he feels immense sympathy for the man who loses his wife and child. Again, this cruelty points to the inhumanity of the Nazis as they detach families and murder those who are not able to work. The only thing that gives the Jews value in the Nazis’ eyes is the physical labor they can produce, again likening them to nothing more than animals.
Themes
Mengele then asks Yanek how old he is. Though Yanek is only 16, he says 18, that he is healthy, and that he is a bricklayer. Yanek is sorted to the right as well. Yanek sees the man in front of him ask where his wife and son are going. A kapo explains that they’re going to the gas chambers, and that he should shut up unless he wants to join them. Someone whispers to him to save his own life and let them go.
The man’s inability to help his family shows the heartbreaking consequences of forced isolation. Even though the man loves his family and doesn’t want to let them die, he immediately understands that any form of protest will only result in his own death as well. Thus, he must disconnect from his family in order to survive.
Themes
When the selection is finished, Mengele addresses Yanek’s group, saying that they are strong enough to be selected for work. He explains that once the Jews are collected, they will organize a new Jewish state where they will be free. Mengele also says that their valuables are being used for the benefit of the Jewish people. The new prisoners nod, buying it. Yanek doesn’t have to heart to tell them that these are all lies. That night, in his bunk, Yanek hears a lullaby his mother used to sing in the distance. The man next to him explains that the women sing when mothers and their children are taken to the gas chambers—they sing “all day, and every night.”
This is a particularly manipulative form of cruelty, as the Nazis spread deceitful myths about their plans for Jews in the future. The reality, as Yanek knows well, is that the Nazis plan to eliminate Jews completely, but the new arrivals still have hope in the idea of a humane world and therefore are more inclined to believe it. Back in the barracks, Yanek understands that the women in the camps know better: their song is in mourning for all of the women and children who have died, and their grief over the lack of humanity in the camps. The fact that they sing “all day, and every night” reflects the depths of the prisoners’ despair and the constant suffering and death that surrounds them.
Themes
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