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Chapter 2
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
Two years later, when Yanek is 12, the Nazis start to build a wall to create a Jewish ghetto in Yanek’s neighborhood. All the Polish people who live in the neighborhood move out, and all the Jews in Kraków who live outside the ghetto have to move in. Thousands of Jews pour in from other areas, and the Germans decree that each flat must hold four families. In Yanek’s flat, 14 people live in a space that had been comfortable for three people.
The Nazis continue to institute policies in Kraków that separate and specifically target Jewish people. The conditions in which Yanek and his family live start to deteriorate more and more. The cramming of 14 people into a space meant for three is seemingly a middle ground between normal life and conditions at the concentration camps, where people are often stuffed into small spaces like animals.
Themes
All Yanek wants to do is go outside and play, but anytime the Germans have work to be done, like scrubbing toilets or building the ghetto’s wall, they grab Jews off the street to do it. Sometimes they even take people out of the ghetto, never to return. Oskar continues to assure Yanek that this will all be over by the summer, but Yanek doubts his father for the first time in his life.
Gratz shows how Yanek is teetering between childhood and adulthood: at 12 years old, it's understandable that all he wants to do is go outside and play. But as he witnesses more and more of the Nazis’ abuse, he gains maturity and foresight even to the point that he is questioning his father.
Themes
