Yanek and his family live in Krakow, Poland. But in just a blink of an eye, their city was invaded by the Germans beginning WWII. For now, Yanek and his family remain in Krakow. For a little while they stay in their flat 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, concentration camps or were killed on site

Yanek's Figurative Journey

With the stress of no food, and constant hiding, Yanek is living in fear of being caught by the Nazis. His emotional state is one of constant terror and panic at what awaits him at every turn. The unknown aspects of the war leave a feeling of being unsettled. 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 and looks up to them but as the war continues Yanek begins to doubt his Fathers constant hopefulness and positivity and wonders who is really right- his father or Uncle Moshe, "I still worried he was wrong, but fresh bread made me forget all my troubles. For a little while, at least." (pg. 25) Doubting your parents for the first time is a struggle for Yanek especially in war-torn Poland.

Yanek lost everything he had, he lost his Mom and Dad his aunts and uncles, and his cousins, and he broke down he had thought about giving up, giving himself to the Nazi but then he gained the will to live he was determined to survive for his parents soon after he was taken to a concentration camp where he was relieved to find his Uncle Moshe. In the camp, he has seen multiple acts of Violence, seeing someone mauled by a dog, Shot, and killed it shakes him but builds his will to survive even more

"it was astounding that there could still be beauty in the world. Especially here, a mile underground"(pg 100) The salt mine is dark and full of salt but extremely beautiful it has gorgeous statues that are thousands of years old, and a cathedral with a pretty chandelier, it's surprising how it could still exist in a world of darkness in a world of pain and suffering, in the middle of the war. Yanek hopes that the statues come alive and save them from this misery knowing that it was only a dream. Later, he had a dream about angelic statues. The next day a Judrat from Krakow, head was bashed in the wall and had salt in his wounds and Yanek got worried that the Nazis would punish them all. Later he had a dream where the statues came to life and had the face of The dead Judnrat "That night, I dreamed the salt statues came to life and set on our captors with their swords, but every one of the statues had the face of the dead man."

"I'm not going to let them line me up on the edge of a pit and shoot, I told myself. I will fight back. I will kick the Nazis in the shins. I will run. I won't go like a sheep to the slaughter!"(pg 109) At this moment Yanek feels angry so angry he lets that anger take control of him and he thinks about fighting back against the Nazis but soon instead of anger he feels fear because one of the prisoners has the same idea as him, "He wrestled it from the shocked officer's hands and struck him with it in the head, knocking his Nazi hat into the muck, striking his raised arms again and again."(pg 110) at roll call the man strikes but it doesn't go as planned "Crack! I jumped at the sound. with the fiery spark of a pistol, it was all over."(pg 110)The man had been shot in the head by a pistol striking fear into Yanek and making him face reality again, 6 prisoners were killed because of this man, and as Yanek watched he accepted the fact that he had to suffer silentlyand that he couldn't fight back because if he did he would kill himself and other Jews.

This picture resembles the cattle car that Yanek was forced into all the way to Birkenau. Stuffed with multiple people for days on end, seeing and watching other people on the way, getting snow thrown at them by kids, and making it to Birkenau behind the first kettle car of people waiting for them to finish "The train arrived at Birkenau at night. The cars clanked and groaned as the train came to a stop half a kilometer outside the gates." 'What was going on? Why weren't we moving? What are we waiting for? I said, at last, my voice hoarse from thirst and fear. Don't you see the fires in the chimneys? a man next to me said. They have to finish off the last train load before they have room for us. I took in his words, too weak to react." (pg 125) Yanek sits in the cramped car waiting for his turn

Yanek's Figurative Journey

Yanek loses his hope and his will to survive. He's scared and distraught he thinks that this is the end for him and that all that he did was for nothing, everything he endeared, and all the pain he suffered was for nothing. "I started to cry, the first tears I had shed since Moshe had died. Why had I worked so hard to survive if it was always gonna 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."(pg 126) This was where Yanek thought he would die and he accepted it he was tired of fighting, tired of being brave, and he had given up. "I was tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of being brave. Tired of surviving. "(pg 127) Then Yanek finally broke down, "Go on! I yelled at the showerhead. Go on. do it! I dare you! I laughed again. what are you waiting for? I cried. kill me! I give up! you win! The pipes rattled and moaned. Something was finally coming out. The men in the room got quiet, like we were all holding our breaths I reached my arms up toward the ceiling kill me, I prayed. please kill me and put an end to this. I'm ready"(pg. 129) Then, Water came out of the pipes cold water rebirthing them.

"The boy introduced himself to me as Fred. I told him my name—Yanek." (pg. 156), Yanek does something he never thought he would do again he tells someone his real name, Yanek, and not B-3087, Yanek makes a friend who had lived in the same area as him, Fred, even though it was risky. When they were working together they heard British planes above them, they knew it meant the Allies were coming to fight but the Kapos put them back to work they also heard bombs nearby and Fred said, "Sometimes I wish the Allies would drop bombs on us, Fred said quietly. "Blow this place to bits, and all the Nazis and Kapos with it. And me too."(pg. 158) Yanek tells him "We can't give up, I told him. We have to survive" (pg. 158) Soon it was dinner and they went to eat flavorless broth, And then they started talking about what they would eat when they got out of the camp until someone told them to shut up but they had a lot of fun. Soon enough they became best friends slept near each other, stood near each other at roll call, and tried to get the same jobs, One day Fred wasn't feeling well and gave Yanek his bread but Yanek didn't eat it and covered for Fred but Fred still felt bad and hasn't eaten anything, The next day the same thing happens, Yanek tells Fred he has to get up because the Kapo will come for him but Fred couldn't get up, The Kapo came and sent Yanek to roll call alone, Yanek was scared and kept thinking Fred was going to show up and he did, beaten up and for his last breath on earth, "The two Kapos lifted Fred's neck into the noose and tightened it, leaving a chair under his feet to keep him from hanging, He was so weak he couldn't even stand, and the rope cut into his neck, turning in face blue. I choked back a sob. This man cannot work a nazi told us. No, I thought. No, he can. He's a good worker. He's just sick. Work makes you free, the nazi told us. But if you cannot work The nazi nodded to the Kapos, and one of them kicked the chair out from under Fred. He lifted his head for just a moment, long enough for me to see his horrified face, and then I couldn't watch anymore."(pg. 163) That night Yanek ate Fred's Bread.

Yanek arrives at Sachsenhausen after surviving the death march his legs hurt and he is also very hungry, He is sent straight to his barrack where they are fed soup and bread after having to eat snow and one bread for several days he is starving. When he was done the Nazis sent him to bed and that's what he wanted because he slept outside in the cold without a blanket, he didn't get that much sleep on the death march so as soon as his head hit the pillow he went to sleep "There were so many of us we couldn't sleep on our backs, but I fell asleep right away just the same. Just being out of the cold felt like paradise."(pg. 187) Then in the morning, the Kapos woke them up to go wash up, under the pump Yanek rinsed himself in cold water. After washing up he went to roll call on the way eating his leftover bread from the night before, lined up for roll call, they all stood there waiting for their numbers to be called but the Kapos didn't put them to work instead doing roll call again and again then going inside to keep themselves warm leaving them outside in the cold.

"I knew our guards were murderers now, but I didn't know some of them were convicted killers in the past. I made sure to stay well clear of Moonface after that,"(pg. 200) Yanek feels anger, surprise, and fear when he meets Moonface. A little anger because Moonface just punched him in the face for looking at him, The wrong way "Without a word, he punched me in the face. My world exploded. Pain shot from my nose to my brain, and my head snapped back like I'd been hit with a shovel. I fell to the ground clutching my face."(pg. 199) Moonface punched him in the face! And it hurt! A lot! Even Yanek was confused and shocked, Because he was so shocked he even yelled at him "What did you do that for? I cried. What did I do? I knew I shouldn't have said anything, but I didn't care. I was too stunned. My nose was already swelling up so badly I couldn't breathe through it. You looked at me the wrong way, the kapo told me. His eyes glittered with amusement before he told me to get up and get back to work."(pg. 199) Like why!? he hit him just because he looked at him, Yanek was even more surprised because he was just minding his business doing work and glanced at him, Yanek was so surprised he even asked him why he did it knowing he would get in trouble for that but he didn't even care. After the prisoners tell him that the kapo's name is moonface and he is a murderer shocking Yanek and making him fear Moonface even more, He even goes as far as to try and get transferred to another camp to get away from him because he was afraid "When I burst outside, all I wanted to do was collapse on the ground until my lungs stopped burning and my legs stopped shaking,"(pg. 201-202) "Another cattle car awaited me, and so did another camp, but at least I had gotten away from Moonface for good."(pg. 201.

Yanek feels like an animal or that's what he thinks people look, at and think of him as. When Yanek got to Buchenwald he noticed the zoo, made so the commandant's guards and their families had something to entertain them, Well-fed children in beautiful clothes, pretty healthy women, and little boys in casual clothes with lollipops these people came to see the animals in the zoo and Yanek wondered what they saw when they looked at all the Jews did they see people or did they animals "What were they thinking, those little German children? Did they see animals when they looked at us, or people? I wasn't so sure myself anymore."(pg. 206) Even the animals were cared for better than them, they had good food and a good home to be in, "The bears in the zoo were fed better than the prisoners." (pg. 206) Yanek would even fight the bear for its food, eating the bear's food, and the bear

At this point in the book, Yanek is mentally drained and nonchalant about a lot of things that he shouldn't be, in the train he rode to Gross-Rosan was so tightly packed and had no food or water so people around him just died and now he had become so accustom to seeing dead bodies he didn't really notice the ones next to him "People died all around me, just like before, but now I hardly took notice of it. I had been surrounded by death for so long, seen so many men die before my eyes, lived with so many dead bodies piled and stacked and strewn about like so much human firewood, that I almost didn't care anymore. Almost."(pg. 212) Yanek had seen so much death, so many bodies that it's just become normal now and almost didn't care about it, Yanek was so done with everything, so done he had a vision of a bomb falling on the plane and killing them all and he wanted to happen for a moment not knowing if he was relieved or more disappointed when the train started moving.

When Yanek got to Dachau the man next to him in his bunk got camp fever, more prisoners got sick and Yanek tried his best to stay away so he wouldn't get sick, trying to find somewhere else to sleep but he couldn't so every night he had to sleep with sick prisoners hoping he wouldn't it was a miracle he didn't and luckily the prisoners didn't have to work any of them worked at Dachau since it was a war. But one night in the spring the prisoners woke up to the sound of explosions nearby really close explosions then a building compound exploded shocked and scared Yanek he covered his head with his hands praying to survive even if it's a little longer than after hours of plane and gun sounds the prisoners looked outside to find out there were no guards outside. Thinking it was a trick Yanek climbs down from his barracks to look outside and there were no guards they had waited to see if a Nazi would jump out but anything but nothing happened there were no Nazis in the camp they all left, going outside Yanek didn't know what to do he had nowhere else to go nobody would help him when suddenly someone said "Soldiers! someone at the front gates cried, Soldiers are coming!"(pg. 244) Yanek panicked and just froze he thought this was the end for him "I steeled myself. So this was it then. The Nazi army would kill us all, gun us down, and leave us for dead before the war ended."(pg. 244) as Yanek the Soldiers started to come inside the camp and he noticed the soldiers, they weren't wearing gray and brown they were wearing green and a tank with the American flag on it Yanek then noticed it was Americans, "the tank had an American flag on it. It's the Americans! I cried, feeling something close to joy for the first time since I could remember. The Americans are coming! The Americans!"(pg. 244)

Yanek was happy he was overjoyed he had his own free will again he didn't have any roommates he could have his own bed with a blanket and a pillow he could take a hot shower brush his teeth, could eat big gourmet meals he was treated the same as the Americans he was treated fairly, he could see his family again which he had there and his next door neighbor he was allowed to go to America, Change his name and start his life again, have an identity, be a person he had freedom again.