Yanek, the main character, and his family live in Krakow, Poland. But just in the blink of an eye, their city was invaded by the Germans. Yanek and his family remain in Krakow. For a little bit, they stay in a small place with several other families. Anti-Semitic rules have been put in place that persecute Jewish people, taking away any rights they had. Over time, walls are built up around the ghetto to contain the remaining Jews who have not been taken for resettlement or deportation yet. One by one many Jews were relocated to other Jewish ghettos, work camps, and concentration camps or were killed on site.

Yanek's Figurative Journey

With the stress of no food and lots of hiding, Yanek is living in fear of being caught by the Nazis. His emotional state is a lot of terror and what awaits him at every turn. Yanek's early life as a 10-year-old boy before the war was very normal. He attended school, played with friends, and went to the Synagogue with his family. He loves his Mom and Dad equally but when the war continues Yanek begins to doubt his father's consent hopefulness and positivity and wonders who is right. His father or his Uncle.

Yanek who has to go to Plaszow concentration camp has to make uniforms for soldiers and prisoners. Yanek says "Now I am officially a prisoner, I thought. I almost laughed in truth I had been a prisoner since the Nazis walked off the Krakow ghetto, but now I finally looked the part." Yanek is saying that he is a prisoner and he is going to work at tailor shops making uniforms.

Yanek has lost all his family members and must continue by himself. After Uncle Moshe dies, Yanek decides to spend most of his time at the camp in Plaszow. Yanek says "After so many months and years of dirty streets and peeling paint, of gray uniforms and spartan barracks, it was astounding that there could still be beauty in the world. Especially here, a mile underground." Yanek is saying that Poland being invaded changed a lot of stuff.

Yanek has to go to this concentration camp where all they make you do is work for nothing. Such as moving rocks and moving them back, digging up holes just to fill them back up. Yanek says "I was an animal to them, a pack mule. But beasts were never treated so poorly. Working animals were expensive. They had a value. I was a Jew. We were lower than animals." Yanek is saying that they are being treated like animals like they are being told to do work for no reason at all.

Yanek goes to this concentration camp to get killed because a man said it is a death camp and the fastest way to die without suffering is to go under the showerhead where there is gas. Yanek says "Why has I worked so hard to survive if it was always going to end like this? If I had known, I wouldn't have bothered. I would have let them kill me back in the ghetto. It would have been easier that way. All that I had done was for nothing." Yanek states that he was going to die at Birkenau and he did all that work for nothing in the other camps. But after the showerhead turned on, it was freezing water. Yanek had survived.

Yanek goes to Auschwitz when the Nazi soldiers and Kapos treated the prisoners like a game. Yanek spent his days digging pits for his fellow prisoners when they inevitably died. "'Have you heard of Auschwitz?' Out kapo asked the new prisoners. 'No?' Someone's waiting for you inside. Do you know who? Death, of course. Death waits for you. Look and see" After this Yanek gets scared and thinks he's going to die at this camp and that it would be all over.

Yanek is given half a loaf of bread to survive a several-day trip where he eats only a bit at a time. Later he loses his bread by helping a boy around his age not get killed. Yanek says "'Hey - you have to walk faster.' The boy said nothing. There was no life in his eyes, no hint that he'd even heard me. I grabbed his arm. 'Hey, listen to me. Just one more day, yes? You can make it one more day, then you can sleep tonight, and start tomorrow fresh. you just have to keep walking.'" Yanek wants this boy to survive and make it one more day so that he knows that he helped the boy survive.

Yanek's Figurtave Journey

Yanek later sees that he lost his bread and that he was saying that it was all the boy's fault. Yanek wants the boy to die the next day so he can get his bread. "He's sick, I told myself. He's mostly dead already. He's a Muselmann. In the morning he won't be able to get up, and they'll shoot him where he lies. He doesn't need that bread. It would probably make him sick to eat it now anyway. If I take it, at least one of us will survive. Face it, I told myself. He'll be dead by morning." Yanek wants this boy to die in the morning so that he can take his bread so that he will survive.

Yanek gets to Bergen-Belsen and is told that he gets a week full of rest and thick soup to regain his strength. Yanek later sees Moonface, who beats him daily for no reason. He wants to get away from Moonface. Yanek says "Bergen-Belsen might have been the place for me to survive until the end of the war, but for Moonface. I had to get away from him." Yanek thought that he could survive the rest of the war at Bergen-Belsen because of the stuff they fed them but when Moonface came around and beat Yanek daily, he had to get away from him.

Yanek has been moved to Buchenwald concentration camp and Yanek has to watch as animals get beat up and tortured by the guards in the Buchenwald zoo and he gets furious about it. Yanek says "I had seen the Nazis do terrible things. Inhumane, unimaginably cruel things, and I had started to become numb. but somehow seeing that deer there thrashing around, trying to free itself from the fence, made my blood boil. I wanted to run over and unite it, to set it free, but I couldn't. There were too many other German soldiers around. If they saw me near the zoo I'd be shot." Yanek is getting furious about the guards torturing the deer and wants to set it free, but he can't.

Yanek who is now at this concentration camp Gross-Rosen has a dream where it is a beautiful day outside and the sun is out to where he falls into a hole where rocks are falling on him. Yanek says "That night I had a dream. I was in a beautiful green meadow. Yellow wildflowers grew here and there, so tall they swayed in the light summer's breeze. But then a dark cloud appeared on the horizon. Lightning flashed, and thunder rolled over the hills, 'No' I said, not wanting my perfect afternoon disturbed. But the storm kept coming" Yanek is saying that he had a dream about it being a nice day and then bad stuff happens.

After Yanek sees that there are no more guards or SS officers he thinks that he has freedom and is asking all these questions about where he will go. Yanek says "Now I was on my own. I could walk right up to the front gates of the camp and walk away. But where would I go? What would I do? My home was in Krakow, hundreds of kilometers away. And what was home anymore? I had no family to go back to." Yanek is surprised that there are no guards and that he is saying he can walk out but he has nowhere to go.

Yanek has come to Munich from the American soldiers rescuing them. A soldier takes Yanek to his his room where he gets a bed and he asks how many people he has to share with and the soldier says nobody. Yanek says "'How many other people do I have to share it with?' I asked him. He looked surprised. 'Nobody' he said. 'It's all tours' A bed all to myself! Then-wonder upon wonders- the soldier gave me a blanket, a pillow, and sheets for the bed. Sheets! My fellow prisoners and I looked around at one another like we were on some alien planet. I hadn't slept on a sheet, nor had a pillow or a blanket, for five years. Perhaps six. Yanek is so happy that he gets a bed, blanket, pillow, and sheets that he feels like to the point of crying. Yanek says he hadn't slept on a bed for 5 or 6 years.