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-Semetic rules have been put in to 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 they were killed on site.

Yanek is alone after they took his family in the deportation. He is scared and frightened, not knowing what to do. He meets with his uncle Moshe at Plaszow Concentration Camp. His uncle Moshe tells him "Survive at all costs, Yanek. We can not let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world" This motivates him to stay alive and survive for his uncle Moshe and his other family.

In chapter 13 Yanek is traumatized from all the things he has seen during the war. He is shooken up and on edge from everything that has happened. He no longer can find joy or happiness. He gets taken to a salt mine in Wieliczka. While underground he sees the beauty of the salt mine. There is things underground carved out of salt. There is Polish kings and queens, a chandelier, gnomes, serpents, and trolls. He realizes that during all this war and all these bad things there can still be beauty.

In chapter 14 Yanek gets sent to Trzebinia Concentration Camp. While he's there the guards are playing with him by making him move big, heavy boulders back and forth. This makes him angry and motivated hime to fight back against the guards. One of the men is getting beaten by a guard but he grabs his weapon and tries to fight back, he is then shot and killed. Yanek becomes fearful after this no longer wanting to fight back. The next day people were pulled out of lines to be hung, falsely accused of trying to help the man. This makes Yanek accept that he can not fight back because it will cost the lives of others. He decideds he would rather die meekly not killing others, than trying to fight back getting himself and others killed.

When the train arrives at Birkenau, Yanek can smell burning flesh in the air. The train sits for hours before the prisoners are let out. Yanek feels as though this is another form of torture, to drive them to panic or madness. Finally, the door opens and the prisoners are marched toward a big brick building with chimneys. Yanek thinks about how much he’s done, how much he's already survived, only to have it taken all away by the Nazis. He begins to cry, wishing that he had let the Nazis kill him back in the ghetto.

Yanek's Figurative Journey

Yanek is at his lowest point begging for death in the Death Camp Birkenau showers, he was crazily laughing when the gas wasn't coming out. He was making up various scenarios about why the gas wasn't coming out, like the match wasn't lighting or something in the systems wasn't working. Then water comes out instead of gas, and he emotinolly changed from his lowest lows, to wanting to actually live. After this he changed by starting to make an effort to stay alive, by washing himself well, and washing his teeth, and going to the end of the line to get better soup, because the heavier chunks would fall to the bottom giving him more to eat.

Yanek meets a kid named Fred and they bond together off three things. Their age, losing all their family, and both of them had lived in Krakow. This helped Yanek mentally because he wasn't lonely and he had someone again. They talked about food they were gonna eat after the war. One day Fred is sick and he can't get up this worries Yanek because he realizes that Fred will die. He tries to tell the kapo who's beating Fred that Fred is okay. Another prisoner moves Yanek away saying "Come away boy" because he didn't want Yanek to die trying to help Fred. Fred was later hung due to his inability to work, this deeply affected Yanek because he lost another person he loved. He sand Fred a kaddish, and promised to never forget him.

While Yanek was at Sachsenhausen the guards would play games with them. They made the prisoners sing, while the guards ate food. They also made the prisoners box each other as a form of entertainment. This was because the war was declining for the Germans which made the guards do these crazy things, because they didn't know what to do anymore.

When Yanek first arrived at Bergen-Belsen he thought it was perfect because they gave them good food, he thought he could survive until the end of war there. But then one day he ran into a guard the other prisoners called Moonface, Moonface would pick on Yanek, and beat him for no reason. The other prisoners said that before the war Moonface was a criminal. Yanek wanted to get out of Bergen-Belsen, so he had to run a race to prove his strength. He was found worthy of going to a new camp and he got away from Moonface for now.

In Buchenwald they had zoos to entertain the children of the guards. The way they made them work at Buchenwald was very harsh they made them carry carts of heavy loads up steep hills while singing. The Nazis chained a deer's antler to a post and Yanek was watching him struggle, and he felt really bad that he couldn't do anything. At the end of the chapter Yanek says that the Nazis had killed so many Jews they that were running out of them.

Yanek travels by train even though many prisoners still die on the trip. Yanek hardly notices the death all around him anymore. He tries to sleep as much as possible to take his mind off of starvation. Yanek hears planes flying over the train and a bomb exploding nearby. For a moment, Yanek thinks that he wants the bombs to strike the train, so this nightmare would end. While at Gross-Rosen Yanek loses a button and one of the kapos notices him. The kapos whips him as punishment and forces him to count in German to 20. This makes Yanek only able to sleep on his stomach because of how bad his back hurts. He wakes up to the sound of bombings, but then goes back to sleep later because he is unfazed after all he has been through.

When Yanek arrives at Dachau, he discovers that typhus is raging through the camp. Prisoners are dying by the hundreds, and the Nazis do nothing to treat them. Yanek thinks that it is a miracle that he does not get sick. The one reprieve is that the prisoners do not have to work, and some days they don’t even have roll call. The war is coming to an end; the Germans are only moving the prisoners around to avoid the Allies. One night in early spring, Yanek wakes to the sounds of deafeningly loud explosions close by. The planes roar for hours, and Yanek hears bullets firing. He hopes that he can survive a little longer. Then, close to dawn, the shooting and explosions stop, and Yanek goes back to sleep. In the morning, however, the prisoners discover that there are no kapos or guards around the Nazis fled in the night. Yanek and the other prisoners look around the yard, not knowing what to do. Yanek has no home or family to go back to, and no way to get there. He wonders who would be kind to him, a Jew, considering that no one ever stood up for him before he was interned. Yanek realizes that although he and the other prisoners are free, they are still powerless.

The Americans immediately take the survivors away from Dachau. They travel by train to Munich, where the Allies will house them temporarily. When Yanek is shown his new room, he asks how many people he has to share the bunk with. The soldier replies that he’ll have it to himself, which shocks Yanek. He’s further amazed when the soldier give him a blanket, a pillow, sheets, a washcloth, a cup, and a toothbrush. Yanek cries as he picks up the toothbrush, remembering the day at the water pump when he’d marveled at the luxury of this simple object. He feels that the Americans are granting him his life back. Then the Americans give Yanek and the other survivors a big plate of dinner and a man starts crying because of how grateful he is. Later, Yanek finds Mrs. Immerglick and figures out she's still alive. She tells him that his cousin is also alive. He is happy that he still has some family. He meets his cousin and they tell him that he should go to America, he later fills out an application and goes to America a few years later.