Prisoner B-3087: Chapter 25 Summary & Analysis

Yanek arrives at Buchenwald and sees that the prisoners are terrified. Yanek carries rocks, learning to carry a stone just the right size—if it is too large and he dropped it, the Nazis would shoot him. If it was 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 is quickly introduced to the Buchenwald zoo, the idea of the camp’s commandant, Karl Koch, and his wife Ilse. The fenced-in area has deer, monkeys, and bears—entertainment for the guards and their families. The prisoners stand at roll call next to the zoo, and Yanek wonders if the children and their mothers think that the Jews are animals too. One day, the Nazi gives the prisoners the chance to get a raw steak that would normally be fed to the bears, dropping it in the mud between two men and telling them to fight for it, which they do. Yanek thinks that the zoo animals are treated better than the prisoners.

One day, Yanek is washing himself at the pump when he sees two SS officers lure a deer to the fence, then tie its antlers to the fence so that it can’t escape and leave it there. Yanek thinks that he had seen the Nazis do unimaginably cruel things, but seeing the deer thrashing around while tied to the fence enrages him. However, he can’t do anything to rescue it. At roll call, the two officers are pulled off duty by the commandant and have their zoo privileges taken away—the Nazis won’t abide cruelty to animals.

At roll call a few days later, Yanek is told that the prisoners are being moved again: Gross-Rosen needs workers, and there were no new shipments of prisoners. The Nazis had killed so many people that they’re running out of Jews.