Mina Gruener Character Analysis

If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn’t have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o’clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them. But I was ten years old, and I had no idea of the nightmare that was to come. None of us did.

My father reached up to hold my mother’s hand. “We must not lose faith, Moshe.”

“See how easy it is to keep your faith when the Nazis take it away along with everything else,” Moshe told him.

My father smiled. “Let them take everything. They cannot take who we are.”

“Mama,” I said, “if we don’t open up they’ll shoot us!”
My mother stared at the door. None of the other parents made a move.
I had to do something. I hurried to the door and unlocked it, and a German officer and a Judenrat police officer pushed past me down the hall.

“Yanek speaks with the wisdom of the prophet Isaiah,” he said softly, then quoted, “‘Come, my people…and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the wrath is past.’” He cleared his throat and looked around. “Mina and I are staying too.”

One by one, the others agreed, until even Uncle Moshe sat down and was quiet.

In the place of my pain, I felt the stirring of determination.

I would not give up. I would not turn myself in. No matter what the Nazis did to me, no matter what they took from me, I would survive.

I was thirteen years old, and my parents were gone.

I was all alone in the world, but I would survive on my own.

But no matter how he was standing, you always knew a Muselmann from his eyes. There wasn’t anything left there. Muselmanners had given up, and there was no life in their expression, no spark of a soul. They were zombies, worked and starved into a living death by our captors. If the man below me wasn’t dead when they came for us tomorrow, the morning roll call would kill him.

That’s what the Nazis carved into my skin. B for Birkenau, 3087 for my prisoner number. That was the mark they put on me, a mark I would have for as long as I lived. B-3087. That was who I was to them. Not Yanek Gruener, son of Oskar and Mina. Not Yanek Gruener of 20 Krakusa Street, Podgórze, Kraków. Not Yanek Gruener who loved books and science and American movies.
I was Prisoner B-3087.
But I was alive.

“We are alive,” I told him. “We are alive, and that is all that matters. We cannot let them tear us from the pages of the world.”

I said it as much for me as for him. I said it in memory of Uncle Moshe, and my mother and father, and my aunts and other uncles and cousins. The Nazis had put me in a gas chamber. I had thought I was dead, but I was alive. I was a new man that day, just like the bar mitzvah boy. I was a new man, and I was going to survive.

I remembered the food on the table in my old apartment in Podgórze, and all my family sitting around me. Mother and Father. Uncle Moshe and Aunt Gizela, and little cousin Zytka. Uncle Abraham and Aunt Fela. […]

I thought too of my friend Fred, and the boy who had been hanged for trying to escape, and the man who had fought back, and all the other people I had watched die. They filled my table and the tables all around me, taking the places of all the real people in the room.

If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn’t have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o’clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them. But I was ten years old, and I had no idea of the nightmare that was to come. None of us did.

My father reached up to hold my mother’s hand. “We must not lose faith, Moshe.”

“See how easy it is to keep your faith when the Nazis take it away along with everything else,” Moshe told him.

My father smiled. “Let them take everything. They cannot take who we are.”

“Mama,” I said, “if we don’t open up they’ll shoot us!”
My mother stared at the door. None of the other parents made a move.
I had to do something. I hurried to the door and unlocked it, and a German officer and a Judenrat police officer pushed past me down the hall.

“Yanek speaks with the wisdom of the prophet Isaiah,” he said softly, then quoted, “‘Come, my people…and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the wrath is past.’” He cleared his throat and looked around. “Mina and I are staying too.”

One by one, the others agreed, until even Uncle Moshe sat down and was quiet.

In the place of my pain, I felt the stirring of determination.

I would not give up. I would not turn myself in. No matter what the Nazis did to me, no matter what they took from me, I would survive.

I was thirteen years old, and my parents were gone.

I was all alone in the world, but I would survive on my own.

But no matter how he was standing, you always knew a Muselmann from his eyes. There wasn’t anything left there. Muselmanners had given up, and there was no life in their expression, no spark of a soul. They were zombies, worked and starved into a living death by our captors. If the man below me wasn’t dead when they came for us tomorrow, the morning roll call would kill him.

That’s what the Nazis carved into my skin. B for Birkenau, 3087 for my prisoner number. That was the mark they put on me, a mark I would have for as long as I lived. B-3087. That was who I was to them. Not Yanek Gruener, son of Oskar and Mina. Not Yanek Gruener of 20 Krakusa Street, Podgórze, Kraków. Not Yanek Gruener who loved books and science and American movies.
I was Prisoner B-3087.
But I was alive.

“We are alive,” I told him. “We are alive, and that is all that matters. We cannot let them tear us from the pages of the world.”

I said it as much for me as for him. I said it in memory of Uncle Moshe, and my mother and father, and my aunts and other uncles and cousins. The Nazis had put me in a gas chamber. I had thought I was dead, but I was alive. I was a new man that day, just like the bar mitzvah boy. I was a new man, and I was going to survive.

I remembered the food on the table in my old apartment in Podgórze, and all my family sitting around me. Mother and Father. Uncle Moshe and Aunt Gizela, and little cousin Zytka. Uncle Abraham and Aunt Fela. […]

I thought too of my friend Fred, and the boy who had been hanged for trying to escape, and the man who had fought back, and all the other people I had watched die. They filled my table and the tables all around me, taking the places of all the real people in the room.