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Chapter 1
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
After the German soldiers arrive, life in Kraków changes quickly: food becomes scarcer, and Nazis tell Poles and Germans not to buy from Jews. At school, the Polish boys won’t play with Yanek anymore—and one morning, Yanek learns that Jews are no longer allowed to go to school. Yanek returns home at lunch to find Oskar, Mina, and Moshe all there.
Upon the Germans’ arrival, it becomes clear that they are trying to slowly treat the Jews as lesser than other citizens, gradually separating them from society in order to eventually remove them from it altogether.
Themes
Yanek tells his parents about being banned from school. Moshe is outraged, but Oskar again says that this will pass. Moshe explains that Jews are being given ration cards with Js on them to buy food. Jews are also forced to wear armbands with the Star of David, and they can’t use any public facilities like libraries, movie theaters, or parks. Jews also cannot go outside their homes after nine p.m. Mina tells Moshe that they don’t have the money to leave, and they have nowhere to go even if they could. Oskar again assures Moshe that the Nazis cannot take away who they are.
These various policies illustrate the many ways in which the Nazis are trying to dehumanize the Jewish people, preventing them from working or even moving freely around the city. Oskar’s statement that the Nazis can’t take away who they are foreshadows Jewish people’s imminent struggle to prevent the Nazis from doing just this. They’ll have to fight to maintain any semblance of their individuality as the Holocaust progresses.
Themes
Yanek wakes in the middle of the night hearing cries of, “fire!” Yanek, Oskar, and Mina look out the window and see that the synagogue is burning. When a man comes out to try and stop the fire, a Nazi soldier shoots him. The officer yells that Jews cannot be outside their homes after curfew. Oskar, who had been putting on his coat, quietly removes it and sends Yanek back to bed.
This is another act of anti-Semitism, targeting the synagogue as a place where Jews worship—and it’s also a means of disrupting their identity. The Nazis reduce the Jewish people to their religion and ethnicity, but without the ability to practice, a part of that identity is taken away as well.
Themes
