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Chapter 5
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, Oskar, and Mina live in the pigeon coop while raids and “resettlements” continue in the ghetto. Jews are taken thousands at a time, though some sneak back to the ghetto and tell stories of camps where Jews are worked to death. Oskar tells Yanek not to listen to the rumors. One day in February, the director of the Judenrat calls a ghetto-wide meeting. The Judenrat are hated throughout the ghetto for working with the Nazis, but Yanek acknowledges that any man who refuses the position is shot or hanged.
As conditions worsen in the ghetto, Gratz illustrates how the spread of fear and paranoia is dividing rather than uniting people. The Nazis are able to turn the Judenrat against other Jews through their cruelty, and in turn, the Judenrat do not resist the Nazis’ unthinkable demands. Given the older Yanek’s ominous reflections on what is to come, it seems that the rumors Oskar and Yanek hear likely have truth to them.
Themes
At the meeting, the director tells the crowd that the Nazis have ordered him to give them 7,000 Jews to deport. He says that it is better to keep the people who can work in the ghetto so that they take fewer people away, and so he suggests that they send the children. The crowd listening to the director is outraged, arguing that they would be sending their children to death camps. The director assures them that he is trying to save as many lives as possible. Oskar takes Yanek out of the square.
Here, Gratz continues to illustrate the way in which the Nazis’ tactics divide people. By playing on fear, people like Yanek and his family resort to isolation to protect themselves and their loved ones. In taking Yanek away from the square, Oskar rejects the plan that the Judenrat director has in mind, opting to protect his son on his own terms rather than sending him away for the supposed good of the community.
Themes
Oskar assures Yanek that he would not let the Nazis take Yanek away—particularly because the next day is Yanek’s 13th birthday, meaning he will no longer be a child. Yanek is pleased that Oskar remembers his 13th birthday: the day that he will become a man according to Jewish law. However, Yanek isn’t sure how they’ll hold his bar mitzvah ceremony, because if they are caught they will be killed. Yanek’s father tells him to sleep in his clothes that night.
Yanek’s bar mitzvah signifies another major step in his coming of age, and it’s also an integral part of his identity. Even though the Nazis have reduced them to their Jewish identity, the Nazis have also taken away so much of what makes them Jewish, like the synagogue and their freedom to practice their religion. The ability to have the ceremony anyway provides Yanek with a deep sense of meaning and hope.
Themes
That evening, Yanek and Oskar sneak out of the apartment and go to an abandoned warehouse building. His uncles Abraham and Moshe are there, along with other men who Yanek doesn’t know—10 men to complete the ceremony. They have Torah scrolls with them, saved from one of the ghetto’s synagogues. Yanek reads from the Torah as best he can, though he has not been able to practice.
Yanek takes a major step in his coming of age. Even though simply having the ceremony does not make Yanek a man, the hardships that surround him and his family (including the fact that he cannot openly practice the Torah without fear of death) do give him a greater sense of maturity and responsibility.
Themes
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When Yanek finishes, Oskar tells him that he is now a man: he is responsible for his own sins and his own goodness. He says, “all we are worth, is […] how we treat our fellow man.” Yanek assures his father that he will remember this. The other men congratulate Yanek before hurrying off.
In the midst of the cruelty and the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, Yanek’s father highlights the need for humanity toward one another—a lesson that Yanek will certainly carry with him as the Holocaust worsens.
Themes
