Boy Character Analysis

I should let him go, I thought over and over. Let him make his own way. I should save myself. That was how you survived the camps: You saved yourself. No one else was going to do it for you.

But this boy had a face. He had a name too, though I didn’t know it. He had a mother and father, probably dead now, but he had family. A home somewhere. He could have been me.

I shook with anger and frustration. He was supposed to die! I needed him to die, so I could have his bread.

I closed my eyes. What was I thinking? I wouldn’t steal bread from a living boy, but I would wish death on him so I could take it without guilt? What were the camps doing to me? What had the Nazis turned me into?

Farther inside Czechoslovakia, some of the villagers hung out of their windows to throw whatever they had to us—crusts of bread, half-eaten apples, raw potatoes. The Czechs couldn’t share much—there was a war on, after all, and food was hard to come by. But their kindness in the face of the Nazi soldiers and their guns warmed my heart. It was easy to think the worst of humanity when all I saw was brutality and selfishness, and these people showed me there was still good in the world, even if I rarely saw it.

I should let him go, I thought over and over. Let him make his own way. I should save myself. That was how you survived the camps: You saved yourself. No one else was going to do it for you.

But this boy had a face. He had a name too, though I didn’t know it. He had a mother and father, probably dead now, but he had family. A home somewhere. He could have been me.

I shook with anger and frustration. He was supposed to die! I needed him to die, so I could have his bread.

I closed my eyes. What was I thinking? I wouldn’t steal bread from a living boy, but I would wish death on him so I could take it without guilt? What were the camps doing to me? What had the Nazis turned me into?

Farther inside Czechoslovakia, some of the villagers hung out of their windows to throw whatever they had to us—crusts of bread, half-eaten apples, raw potatoes. The Czechs couldn’t share much—there was a war on, after all, and food was hard to come by. But their kindness in the face of the Nazi soldiers and their guns warmed my heart. It was easy to think the worst of humanity when all I saw was brutality and selfishness, and these people showed me there was still good in the world, even if I rarely saw it.