Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz: A Holocaust Survivor's Story

Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story

 

The stories that survive are the ones that define history. No truer does this ring than with the countless stories of Holocaust survivors that have been told in the decades since World War II. These testimonies are important, as they signify the darkest time in modern human history, a grim reminder of what evils humanity is capable of. The tale told in Alan Gratz’s Young Adult novel Prisoner B-3087 is one of these stories. Prisoner B-3087 uses the Holocaust survival story of Jack Gruener in order to showcase the horrors of the Holocaust in such a way that the target demographic of the book—middle and high schoolers—will understand the terror surrounding this point in history.

 

Called by his Polish name, Yanek, the novel follows Jack’s story from the time the war began when he was ten to his survival of the concentration camps at sixteen. The book chronicles the fall of his home in Kraków, Poland, Yanek’s separation from his family, and the events surrounding his torment as a Nazi prisoner. While a work of historical fiction, any liberties taken by Gratz were done so with the real Gruener’s blessing in order to better illustrate what Jews and other groups considered “undesirable” by the Nazis went through in their concentration camps. Much of the book is presented with basic sentence structure in order to make it easier for a younger audience to digest. Be that as it may, Gratz does not pull any punches with his depiction of events that Yanek experienced. Much of the novel relies on the descriptions of what happened to him in order to bolster the history that took place in the camps. This grim reality is not muddled by Gratz’s choice to write with simplicity, however, as he is able to capture the horrors of the Holocaust in such a way that the reader feels like they are alongside Yanek, experiencing everything with him.

 

What is most revering about the novel is the images of the Holocaust displayed, as they capture their destructive force in such a way that a grade-schooler would be able to understand what transpired without every gory detail. Be that as it may, as mentioned earlier, Gratz makes sure that readers understand what happened to Yanek and millions of others in the same situation as him, not shying away from everything that went on in the camps. The scarcity of food, egregious amount of manual labor, and the “games” Nazis would play with prisoners are showcased in as much detail as one can go into for a book aimed at younger teens. It is captured in such a way that one will feel angry at what’s happening to Yanek and those around him throughout its pages. The book isn’t for the faint of heart, as it captures the dark depression of this era in history with horrid precision. This is not a book about only one young boy’s struggle to survive a nightmare; it is about the survival of all who were taken into the camps.

 

There is little more to say other than this because it is a book I feel to be historically important that you should read for yourselves. The documentation of Gruener’s life via Yanek’s tale is one that cannot be taken lightly and should be read with the full historical context of the events in mind. Part of me is remiss to recommend it to older readers, as less-dramatized firsthand accounts such as Eli Wiesel’s Night capture the horrors of the Holocaust in ways no historical fiction ever could. Be that as it may, Prisoner B-3087 is a captivating historical tale of a man who managed to survive ten different concentration camps over the course of six years. With good writing, an accurate portrayal of the time period, and scenes that will haunt you long after you put the book down no matter how old you are, this novel serves as a well-written introduction to the Holocaust and its events.