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 Yanek’s parents are taken to the concentration camp, his aunts, uncles, and cousins are quickly taken as well. Yanek, the only member of his family remaining, is then taken from his job at the tailor shop because they need workers at the tailor shop in Plaszów, a nearby labor camp. He begins to panic as he’s is loaded into a truck, wondering what fate might befall him.
Gratz emphasizes Yanek’s further isolation even after his parents are taken, recounting how his entire family quickly followed. Now, without anyone else to be responsible for him, Yanek must take care of himself entirely at only 13 years old.
Themes
The truck takes Yanek to Plaszów, a series of buildings surrounded by barbed wire. He is ordered to strip and is forced to exchange his clothing for a pair of wooden shoes and a blue and gray striped prison uniform. Yanek thinks that he is “officially a prisoner.” As he walks to the tailor shop, Yanek notices the different symbols on the prisoners’ uniforms: the star of David for Jews, red triangles for political prisoners, green for criminals, black for gypsies, purple for Jehovah’s Witness, and pink for homosexuals. All of them have a letter to indicate their country of origin, but there are no letters in the Stars of David. Jews, Yanek thinks, “had no country.”
Once Yanek arrives at the camp, the Nazis begin the first steps of removing his and others’ identity. Now dressed in a prison uniform, and with only the Star of David to identify him, Yanek has become indistinguishable from other Jews. He is not even classified by country, merely by his Jewish identity. While this anonymity helps him survive, as this and future chapters illustrate, it also removes him from any meaningful connection with who he is and the things that give his life value.
Themes
As Yanek walks, he spots his uncle Moshe and calls out to him. Moshe sees him and shakes his head in horror, looking away. The kapo demands to know who shouted, saying that prisoners are not to speak unless spoken to. He strikes the man closest to him, and Yanek resolves not to speak again until he can find Moshe privately.
In this passage, Gratz emphasizes what will become Moshe’s two major lessons for Yanek in the camps: the need to be anonymous, and the need to be isolated from others. Trying to connect, or standing out in any way, can get a person hurt or even killed.
Themes
At the tailor shop, Yanek does the same work as his old job, but he recounts that the workers are often beaten simply because they are Jews. He sees men who are beaten not get up again—they are then dragged away by soldiers, never to return.
Yanek recognizes how the anti-Semitism that he experienced in the Kraków ghetto is only worse in the concentration camps, as he and others experience violence and the threat of death on a daily basis simply because they are Jewish.
Themes
Get the entire Prisoner B-3087 LitChart as a printable PDF.
That night, Yanek returns to the barracks. As he’s eating his small piece of bread and watery soup, Moshe finds him, and they hug with relief. Moshe then explains that Yanek cannot do anything to stand out. From now on, he must have “no name, no personality, no family, no friends.” Yanek understands.
Moshe emphasizes the need for Yanek to be anonymous, because standing out can get a prisoner killed. This is another, more insidious way in which the Nazis abuse the prisoners: beyond hurting and killing them, they also rob them of individuality and of their very humanity.
Themes
Yanek asks Moshe if his parents are there, and Moshe explains that they are not—that unless they were taken to a work camp, they are likely dead. Moshe tells him, through tears, that his wife, Gizela, and daughter Zytka were also shot and killed because they could not work. He says that they have one purpose now: to survive at all costs. He tells Yanek that they cannot let the monstrous Nazis erase them.
Yanek’s ability to survive and come of age carries with it additional responsibility, as Moshe implies here. While his parents and many other members of his family were unable to survive, Yanek must do so in order for his family—as well as the Jewish people as a whole—to be remembered and live on in him.
Themes
Soon after, Yanek and Moshe line up in an open field for roll call, where the Nazis check that the numbers on their clipboards match the numbers on their uniforms. The commandant of the camp, Amon Goeth, walks along the line with two German Shepherds behind him. Suddenly, Goeth stops in front of the prisoner beside him and yells, “Attack! Attack! Kill the Jew!” The dogs immediately start to rip the man beside Yanek to pieces. Yanek wants to help, but knows that if he moves, he will be killed as well. When the man stops moving, Goeth shoots him through the head.
Yanek is introduced to the extreme cruelty of the Nazis as a whole, and particularly Amon Goeth, as he kills Jews for no reason other than to play out his prejudice and to instill fear. Yanek thus begins to understand that determination alone may not ensure a person’s survival: the random misfortune of deaths like these proves that he will need luck as well.
Themes
Another man is killed at roll call for not doffing his cap in the correct way. When it is over, Yanek feels that he has “survived a battle.” Yanek hears someone ask what the score is. Another man says “Goeth seven, Jews nil.” When Yanek asks if that’s the number Goeth has killed since the man has been here, the man responds that it’s only the number of Jews Goeth has killed that day.
Here, Gratz emphasizes the scale of the Nazis’ brutality— what Yanek just witnessed at roll call is not a rare occurrence. He and the other prisoners even acknowledge how much of a game their lives are to the Nazis, as they refer to the deaths in the camp by Goeth’s “score.”
Themes
