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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Prisoner B-3087, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Determination and Luck
Anti-Semitism and Cruelty vs. Humanity
Connection vs. Isolation
Coming of Age, Trauma, and Remembrance
Identity vs. Anonymity
Summary
Analysis
Yanek thinks that he was ready to die, but when water came out of the showerheads, it was as though he had been born again. He becomes determined to keep surviving. After the shower, the Nazis shave the prisoners’ heads and tattoo numbers onto their skin. Yanek is B-3087. Yanek thinks that he has become a number—not a person from Kraków, not the son of Oskar and Mina Gruener, not a person who loved books and science and American movies. He is no longer an individual, but he is glad he is still alive.
The Nazis continue to take actions that remove any identity from the prisoners, as Yanek acknowledges here. By shaving the prisoners’ heads, the Nazis generalize them into a kind of animalistic herd rather than allowing them to be individuals. Tattooing numbers into their skin not only dehumanizes them further (being branded almost like cattle)—it also relegates them to a number rather than a full, meaningful human identity.
Themes
After Yanek is tattooed, he’s taken to another room with prisoner uniforms. He gets pants that are too short and a shirt that is too long, but he is lucky to get a pair of wooden shoes that fit. The barracks are worse than any he has lived in: shelves with no mattresses, pillows, or blankets. Still, Yanek is grateful to be alive. Yanek spots a small wooden horse in the barracks, a children’s toy. He wonders if the child had left their horse behind so that some part of them “might survive and be remembered.”
Yanek’s ability to get shoes that fit him serves as another lucky chance that proves integral to his survival. Given the hard labor and other physical trials that the prisoners are up against, having well-fitting shoes is necessary to avoid injury or punishment for lagging behind. Meanwhile, Yanek’s recognition that a child may have left the horse so that a part of them “might survive and be remembered” is a testament to how the prisoners’ identities are stripped from them and how terrifying it feels to be forgotten in death.
Themes
A man in their barracks announces that there is a boy who is 13, and he asks for 10 men to perform a bar mitzvah. Some prisoners dismiss the man, but Yanek realizes how important it is, so he offers to participate. After Yanek’s offer, another man agrees as well, followed by another, until eventually 10 are found. Yanek realizes that although the boy looks young, Yanek is only a few years older than him. Yanek remembers his own bar mitzvah, “a lifetime ago.”
The boy’s bar mitzvah offers Yanek (and readers) an opportunity to reflect on his own bar mitzvah in the Kraków ghetto a few years prior, and how much has happened in the interim. Yanek has already survived three concentration camps and countless near-death experiences—trauma that amounts to Yanek feeling like he’s experienced “a lifetime.”
Themes
At the end of the bar mitzvah, Yanek goes up to the boy and gives him the small wooden horse as a gift. He tells him that they are alive, and he affirms that they cannot let the Nazis erase them from the world or from history. Yanek says this in memory of Uncle Moshe, Oskar, Mina, and his other family members. He thinks that like the boy, he is a new man today, and that he’ll survive.
The maturity that Yanek has gained is on full display here. He takes on the determination and sense of responsibility that Moshe left for him as he becomes determined not to let the Nazis eliminate the Jews from the world’s memory. Thus, Gratz also illustrates how Yanek’s coming of age is contingent upon the obligation to remember those he’s lost and to survive in honor of them.
Themes
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