Prisoner B-3087

by

Alan Gratz

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Coming of Age, Trauma, and Remembrance Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Determination and Luck Theme Icon
Anti-Semitism and Cruelty vs. Humanity Theme Icon
Connection vs. Isolation Theme Icon
Coming of Age, Trauma, and Remembrance Theme Icon
Identity vs. Anonymity Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Prisoner B-3087, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age, Trauma, and Remembrance Theme Icon

Prisoner B-3087 follows Yanek from the time he is 10 years old, living in Kraków, Poland, to the time when he is liberated at Dachau at 16 years old. In those six years, Yanek experiences a great deal of trauma: the loss of his family, the abuse of 10 different concentration camps, the constant threat of death, and the genocide of the Jewish people. Gratz illustrates how, because of this trauma, Yanek is forced to grow up and take on a much greater amount of responsibility for himself and others. In addition, Yanek feels a responsibility born of his continued survival: to make it to adulthood so that he might carry on the memory of those who have been lost. Through Yanek’s experience, Gratz ultimately argues that for people growing up in a traumatizing setting, coming of age is not only something one undergoes at a much more rapid pace than one would have otherwise—it also carries with it a mandate to remember those who could not live out the full extent of their lives. 

Gratz illustrates how, when the Nazis first invade Poland, Yanek starts to grow up and take responsibility for his own survival—and even for that of his family. While Yanek initially relies on his father, Oskar, for leadership and comfort, two years into the Nazi’s occupation of Kraków, he starts to grow doubtful of his father’s constant optimism. In 1941, at 12 years old, Yanek begins to take responsibility for his family’s well-being. One day, when Oskar is out, German soldiers and the Judenrat (Jews put in charge of other Jews in the ghetto) storm into Yanek’s building and demand they open the door. When none of the adults in the room move out of fear, Yanek lets them into the apartment to avoid punishment. Later, he also finds a pigeon coop on their roof for his family to live in, so that they can have more protection from the soldiers. In all of these instances, Yanek takes on the role of an adult, spurred by the feeling that he needs to protect his family. When Yanek turns 13, he becomes a man under Jewish law, and he, his father, and a few other men hold his bar mitzvah under cover of night. However, later, when Yanek and his family are hiding in the pigeon coop, his uncle Moshe tells him, “You're still a boy, Yanek, even if you've had your bar mitzvah,” and he argues that they should go outside so that the Nazis don’t find them hiding and kill them. Yanek replies that if they leave the coop, they will certainly be killed, but if they hide, they might be spared. His logic gradually sways all of the adults, even Moshe. Thus, Yanek proves that while turning 13 does not necessarily make one an adult, being able to take responsibility for one’s family and to protect them in the face of danger certainly fosters one’s wisdom and maturity.

Yanek matures even more in the concentration camps. There, he starts to recognize that being forced to grow up has been a traumatic experience, but also one that affords him the ability to remember those whose lives have been cut short. Yanek’s parents are taken to the concentration camps before he is, causing him to be completely responsible for himself at a young age. He thinks, “I was thirteen years old, and my parents were gone. I was all alone in the world, but I would survive on my own.” The fact that Yanek no longer has his parents to protect him is in itself a trauma that causes him to grow up much earlier than he would have otherwise. Yanek is taken to the camps soon after his parents, where he is reunited with his uncle Moshe but learns that the rest of his family is likely dead. As he experiences firsthand the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, Yanek starts to recognize how his survival is necessary for the remembrance of the Jews. Moshe tells him, “Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.” After Moshe’s own death, Yanek takes this advice to heart even further. Being alone in the world comes with a certain despair, but Yanek reiterates the need to survive so that he can honor the memory of those who have died. By the time Yanek is liberated from Dachau, he is 16 years old, and the trauma and abuse that he has survived continues to illuminate the necessity of remembering those who did not make it out. When Yanek has his first meal after escaping, he thinks about the people that he watched die and the family members he has lost: “They filled my table and the tables all around me, taking the places of all the real people in the room. The dead would always be with me, I knew, even when I was surrounded by life again, even if the Americans gave me back all the objects I had lost.” Yanek now has the emotional maturity that only comes with deep, unimaginable loss, and he understands how he will always carry the burden of that loss with him in remembering the dead.

Gratz opens the book with this passage: “If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, […] I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them.” This is an interesting stylistic choice, as it implies that Yanek is retelling the story from the future—in which he already knows what is going to happen to him. This structure foreshadows the maturity that he has gained and the trauma he has endured. The opening sentences also imply that the book serves not only to detail those traumas and his coming of age, but also to document the memories of the people that he has lost.

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Coming of Age, Trauma, and Remembrance Quotes in Prisoner B-3087

Below you will find the important quotes in Prisoner B-3087 related to the theme of Coming of Age, Trauma, and Remembrance.
Chapter 1 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Oskar Gruener, Mina Gruener
Related Symbols: Toothbrushes
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

He was my father, and I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. It was January 1941. The Germans ruled Kraków. I was twelve years old. And for the first time in my life, I had begun to doubt my father.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Oskar Gruener
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“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.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Oskar Gruener, Mina Gruener, Holtzman
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

“Yanek, my son,” he said, looking at me solemnly, “you are a man now, with all the duties of an adult under Jewish law. You are now responsible for your own sins, but also for your own goodness. Remember what the Talmud teaches: Life is but a river. It has no beginning, no middle, no end. All we are, all we are worth, is what we do while we float upon it—how we treat our fellow man. Remember this, and a good man you will be.”

Related Characters: Oskar Gruener (speaker), Yanek Gruener
Page Number: 46-47
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“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.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Oskar Gruener (speaker), Uncle Moshe, Mina Gruener
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Oskar Gruener, Mina Gruener
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

We were going to survive, the two of us. We were going to survive—the last two men in the Gruener family written on the pages of the world.

Now there was only me. Yanek. I was fourteen years old, and I was alone in the world again. This time for good.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Uncle Moshe, Amon Goeth
Page Number: 86
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

“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.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Uncle Moshe, Oskar Gruener, Mina Gruener
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

Farther inside Czechoslovakia, some of the villagers hung out of their windows to throw whatever they had to us—crusts of bread, half-eaten apples, raw potatoes. The Czechs couldn’t share much—there was a war on, after all, and food was hard to come by. But their kindness in the face of the Nazi soldiers and their guns warmed my heart. It was easy to think the worst of humanity when all I saw was brutality and selfishness, and these people showed me there was still good in the world, even if I rarely saw it.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Fred, Boy, Thomas, Isaac
Related Symbols: Bread
Page Number: 224-225
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

Beside my bed there was a little table, and on the table the Americans had given me more gifts: a washcloth, a cup, and a toothbrush. I picked up the toothbrush reverently and cried as I held it in my hands. I remembered that day, standing at the pump in the camp—which camp had it been?—when I wondered when I had ever been so fortunate as to have something so simple as a toothbrush. Piece by piece, bit by bit, the Americans were giving me back my life.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker)
Related Symbols: Toothbrushes
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Yanek Gruener (speaker), Uncle Moshe, Fred, Oskar Gruener, Mina Gruener, Uncle Abraham, Aunt Fela, Aunt Gizela, Zytka
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis: