Yanek and his family like in Kraków, Poland. But in just a blink of an eye, their city was invaded by the Germans beginning WWII. For now, Yanek and his family all remain in Kraków. For a whole they stay in their flat with other families. Anti-Semitic rules have been put in place that persecute Jewish people, taking away any rights that 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 aspect of the war leaves 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 father's constant hopefulness and positivity and wonder who's 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 in a struggle for Yanek especially in war-torn Poland.

Throughout chapters 7-9, Yanek's emotions spiral downwards. After hiding in the pigeon coop, he survives with his family for a while before his parents get taken while he is away. From there, he goes on in the ghetto for a while longer before getting taken to work and brought to Plaszów concentration camp. He has lost pretty much everything in these chapters, finding Uncle Moshe at the camp later on. Despite that, learning that most of his family was either dead or gone devastated Yanek, discouraging him from even wanting to live. Though, he tries to keep himself from giving up by asking if that's what his parents would want for him.

In these chapters, Yanek moves a mass ton. After being moved from Plaszów, Yanek ends up in the salt mine. While there, he discovers the Judenrat that had stormed his flat back in Kraków was with him and the other Jews. Later on, he discovered the man dead. He has new barracks, new Jews that live with him, new tasks, and new overseers. The only thing that stayed was the terrible living conditions and the horrendous food. Now that he's hitting salt, his strength diminishes.

Now that Yanek is in Trzebinia, he is experiencing the harsher activities of the Nazis. The Nazis treat the prisoners like toys, making them move rocks back and forth and other things just for the heck of it. Yanek gets infuriated with the prisoners and the Nazis, asking himself why no one will fight back. Though he feels this way, someone actually does fight back and he watches them get shot. After that some random, innocent individuals get punished. Yanek's angry feelings diminish after realizing that fighting back gets others hurt.

In chapter 16, Yanek is taken from Trzebina into Birkenau. He isn't told where he is going, getting into a packed train car and moving along the tracks. He stops at a station and is pelted with snowballs by boys his age. There he realized that the world was against him too. At the next stop he meets another train car of prisoners, which is where he learns he is going to the death camp of Birkenau. He manages to survive by sheer luck in the gas chambers where they were led to die, water coming out instead of gas.

Yanek's Figurative Journey

Yanek is experiencing a plethora of emotions right now. From anxiety to hysteria, he has a huge leap of moods through the chapter. In the beginning, he feels overwhelming anxiety of where he's going and how he's going to survive. Then, he goes mentally numb from the realization that he's going to die, though he quickly flips to sadness after he leaves the train. He cries all the way into the showers, but then he breaks into hysteria. Yanek makes up situations, like someone standing on the hose that would emit the gas into the chamber and starts laughing. Yanek's emotional range in these chapters is definitely interesting and wild.

In chapters 19-22, Yanek is at Auschwitz. He comes in through the gate and is told that the only way out was the fires. He meets a boy named Fred when someone next to him dies. The two became friends, quickly finding out they had a lot in common. On the work detail he was assigned to work in the gravel pit, Fred being by him. The two talked, finding out that they lived by each other back when things were normal. Both boys talk about food to try and liven their spirits, Yanek's overall moral rising. Though, Fred gets sick, soon unable to get off his shelf. A Nazi forces Yanek to go to role call, and at the very end Fred is dragged to a noose and hanged. Yanek prays to never forget Fred. Soon after he gets moved from Auschwitz, feeling triumphant that he left out the front gate.

Yanek begins his "Death March" through the bitter winter to get to Sachsenhausen. The Nazis march in the lines of prisoners and in the back, shooting those who are too far behind. Most of the prisoners freeze or get shot, but Yanek manages to survive. When he gets to Sachsenhausen, he gains hope by seeing that there are no chimneys, though he soon finds that things are pretty bad. The guards force them to stand in a role call, and someone had to squat the "Sachsenhausen Squat," which even a healthy person wouldn't be able to hold just because the man wiped sleet from his face.

In Bergen-Belsen, the prisoners are treated suspiciously well. Yanek gets more food than he's eaten in 6 years in just a week, though the richness of the soup against his starved stomach did give him a stomachache, it was still nice. Though the noticeably better conditions, Yanek is singled out and harassed by a Kapo nicknamed "Moonface." Moonface was already rumored to be a killer before the war, and that's nerve-wracking in itself. Moon-face continuously finds Yanek, punching him and just generally treating him poorly. In the end of the chapter, Yanek wins a race so he could go to a different camp, though there is foreshadowing on the end of the chapter, saying that he got away from Moonface "for good."

Yanek arrives at Buchenwald, and he notices how terrified the eyes of the prisoners look. He feels the tense feeling of the camp and the prisoners, and soon learns of the Witch of Buchenwald. Ilse Koch was a very ruthless woman, and in the chapter she asked a man if he had additional tattoos. He did, and Yanek admits that the man was never seen again. Yanek is pretty exhausted from work at the camp, and at night he heard the bombs of allies. Low and behold, they were told that they were marching again. Yanek says that "the Nazis had killed so many of us, they were running out of Jews." (209)

Yanek is taken by train, and in the train he hears the loud bombs going off around them. In a moment of faltering hope, Yanek secretly hopes that one of the bombs hit the train car. He arrived and built more barracks, desperate to prove he can work. He daydreams about having a normal life after the war, but is broken from his thoughts when a Nazi punished him for "losing a button," having to get 20 lashes. The worse part was is that he had to count in German, and the Nazi makes him restart many times.

Yanek arrives at Dachau and is immediately faced by the challenges of the camp. Typhus, or, "Camp fever" (pg 240) is being spread like wild fire around the camp. Yanek luckily avoids the sickness, but he doesn't avoid the war. "The war had come to Dachau," Yanek states on page 241. The sound of bombs keep the prisoners awake at night, and in the morning there are no kapos. No one believed it, not until the Allies came. Yanek was liberated and taken away from the camps.

Yanek is taken to Munich with the rest of the prisoners. He receives his own bed, which honestly shocks him. He had been forced to sleep in a shared bed with 5-6 other people, so the suddenness of being able to have his own things was a reset to him. He also receives his own toothbrush, which makes him cry in joy. Yanek goes and sits at a table and eats, noting that "The dead will always be with me," (251) which means that he'll always remember the people that died when he was in the concentration camps. Later on, he runs into Mrs. Immerglick. She tells him that he still has cousins alive, and Yanek goes to find them. Afterwards, he gets his papers in order and moves to America.