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 have. 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 constant hiding, Yanek is living in fear of being caught by the Nazis. His emotional state is one of constant Terror and panic that awaits him at every turn. The unknown aspect of the world 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 work continues Yanek begins to doubt his father's constant hopefulness and positivity and wonders who is 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.

When Yanek finally got back to the pigeon coop in the Krakow ghetto his cousin Sala was the only one left all of his parents uncles and aunts were gone. Yanek doesn't know where they have been taken or if they have been killed all he knows is that he might never see them again. Then he was standing in line for bread and was put in a truck and taken to a concentration camp. when he gets to the concentration camp he finds Uncle Moshe and is relieved that he has a family member that is still alive. When he gets to talk to Uncle Moshe, Uncle Moshe tells him to lie low and not let anyone notice him.

In chapter 13 Yanek was transported to the Wieliczka Salt Mine as a new job. One morning at roll call Yanek is loaded onto a truck with 50 other prisoners one of those prisoners used to be a Judenrat and they are taken to an industrial-looking building. Yanek thinks that he recognizes one of the other men and asks if he’s from Kraków. The man adamantly says no—he is “no one.” As the prisoners are led into the building, Yanek realizes that it is the entrance to an enormous mine. As they descend in the elevator, Yanek feels trapped. One of the other prisoners says that they must be in the Wieliczka salt mine.

Yanek is now at the Trzebinia concentration camp. One day, he and some other prisoners are tasked with moving an immense pile of large rocks from one side of a field to another, all the while being beaten by SS officers. Once it is complete, the officers tell the prisoners to move the pile back. Yanek was transferred to Trzebinia shortly after arriving at the salt mine. He thinks that Trzebinia is worse than the other camps because the Nazis here like to play games as if the prisoners are just toys. Yanek fumes as he starts to move the rocks back, but knows that if he allows himself to be provoked he will be beaten as punishment.

When the train arrives at Birkenau, Yanek can smell burning flesh. 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 in life in the showers, laughing and losing it. Then, when the water comes out of the showers, he gains life again. Now, he is starting to think of any way to get a better chance at life, like waiting until the end of the line for food to get bigger chunks, washing himself every day, and brushing his teeth with his finger. This shows how he went from his lowest low to almost his highest high.

While Yannek is in the extermination death camp, he meets a kid named Fred around his age. When they introduce themselves, they learn that they didn't grow up too far apart. When they weren't working Yanek and Fred would talk about food and menus they would love. But they knew if they talked too much and were caught they would both be killed. One day Fred started to get sick and couldn't work so he got hung and beat with clubs.

Three days later, Yanek arrives at Sachsenhausen camp. Luckily, the Nazis do not make the perpetrators make the prisoners work immediately, instead sending them to the barracks with soup and bread. Even though Yanek shares a bed with five other men at night, he falls asleep instantly, grateful to be out of the cold. The next day, Yanek sees that the camp is filled with corpses stacked on top of each other. Yanek washes at the pump, and he remembers out of the blue the first day his mother brought home a toothbrush for him. He marvels at how amazing it is to own this simple object.

Soon after, Yanek is shipped by cattle car to Bergen-Belsen. When he and the other prisoners arrive, the commandant is disappointed by how weak they all look, and he starts to point at the prisoners to separate them. Yanek is devastated not to be picked until he watches as the ones who have been chosen are gunned down. He realizes that the prisoners who had been selected were the weakest, not the strongest—Yanek can’t tell the difference. The commandant then says that they will not work to regain their strength.

Yanek arrives at Buchenwald and sees that the prisoners are terrified. Yanek carries rocks, learning to have a stone just the right size—if it is too large and he drops it, the Nazis will shoot him. If it were too small, they would shoot him for being lazy. Some of the Jews are chained to carts and “whipped like animals” while they haul loads of stones.

Yanek continues to learn the “game” of the camps, ensuring that he can survive by picking just the rock of the right size to carry. Again, his descriptions of how the Nazis treat the prisoners “like animals” reinforces their dehumanization of the Jews, a theme that is especially prevalent at Buchenwald.

This time, Yanek travels by train—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 Allie's 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 that this nightmare will end. Yanek’s momentary lapse in determination, as he hopes that the bombs hit their train car, makes it clear just how grueling his journey has been. Even after surviving so much, he wavers on whether he wants to keep going. But the fortune that a bomb does not strike the train allows Yanek to keep going.

When Yanek arrives at Dachau, he discovers that typhus rages 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 ending; the Germans are only moving the prisoners around to avoid the Allies.

Again, Yanek’s survival at Dachau is due mostly to luck: despite his consistent determination to live, he could just as easily have succumbed to typhus like so many of the other prisoners. Yanek himself acknowledges his luck in not getting sick by describing it as a “miracle,” grateful that he can survive after enduring so much hardship already.

That night in the dining hall, Yanek sits in a chair at a table for the first time in six years. He looks at the silverware reverently. Yanek is amazed at the food they are brought: roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, and rolls. A man at the table starts to cry, and the allies don’t know what to do. Yanek asks him to pass the salt, and the man looks up and laughs through his tears. Yanek wonders if the Americans, or anyone, could ever understand how amazing this simple meal was.