 | |
| Author | Alan Gratz |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Scholastic Inc. |
Publication date | March 1, 2013 |
| Publication place | United States |
| ISBN | 9780545459013 |
Prisoner B-3087 is a young adult historical fiction novel by Alan Gratz. [1] The book is "based on the true story of Ruth and Jack Gruener," who were prisoners during the Holocaust. [1] [2] Prisoner B-3087 was published by Scholastic Inc in 2013.
Yanek Gruener is a ten-year-old boy living in Kraków, Poland in 1939 when Adolf Hitler invades, at the beginning of World War II. Once the Nazi Party takes over the city, Yanek and his family are forced to live in the Krakow Ghetto, with other Jewish families. For three years, Yanek lived in cramped small two-bedroom apartments housing 20 people of different families, watching other families and loved ones being taken to different concentration camps, knowing they were not returning. When Yanek was thirteen years old, he and his uncle were taken to the Plaszow Concentration Camp, where they worked in the tailor shops making uniforms for the German soldiers and fellow prisoners. While in Plaszow, Yanek and his uncle hid under a loose floorboard to escape work detail, and is later said by Yanek (also known as Jake or Jacob) that he truly believes that hiding is what saved him, for if he could survive Amon Goeth then he could survive it all. After the death of his uncle, he was employed through the concentration camp to work in an enamelware factory by a man named Oskar Schindler. Sadly, he was transferred away from Plaszow three months before Schindler started to save the Jewish prisoners who worked in his factory. == After one year in the Plaszow Concentration Camp, Yanek was moved to the Wieliczka Salt Mine and worked in the mines for a short time until he was moved to Trzebinia Concentration Camp. The Nazi soldiers and Kapos treated the prisoners like a game. Yanek spent his days digging pits for his fellow prisoners when they inevitably died. After less than a year in Trzebinia, Yanek and the other prisoners were shoved into cattle cars and transported to Birkenau Concentration camp. Once he arrived, Yanek and the other Jewish prisoners were led into the shower. Believing they were to die, they started to yell at the guards, telling them not to waste time and kill them already. Instead, they were met with water, after which they were given new clothes and shoes. Yanek got his B-3087 tattoo. While in Birkenau, Yanek stood with a 13 year old boy during his bar mitzvah and worked to keep himself alive until he was moved from Birkenau to its sister camp, Auschwitz.
Yanek and his fellow prisoners were forced to walk to his sixth concentration camp, Auschwitz, only stopping along the way to pick up more Jewish prisoners. There, he was moved to the right by Dr. Mengele along with the rest of the men. After surviving Auschwitz, he was part of a two week long death march to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Shortly after arriving, he was forced back into a cattle car and sent to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. There, due to their poor health and weak bodies, the Nazi official ordered all the Jewish prisoners not to work for a week and instead eat and regain their strength. Shortly after that, he was shoved back into a cattle car and sent off to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Unlike the other concentration camps, Buchenwald was open to the public as a zoo, ran by Karl Koch and his wife, nicknamed "the witch of Buchenwald". After surviving the witch of Buchenwald, Yanek was once again placed in a cattle car and sent to Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp, where he lost a button on his jacket and got more than 20 lashes before he was sent on his second death march. This time he was sent to Dachau Concentration camp, his tenth one, where he was eventually saved from imprisonment by American soldiers.
Gratz discussed various concentration camps that the main character spent time at throughout WW2:
Gratz introduces significant people from this time such as Amon Goeth, Dr. Mengele, Karl Koch, Ilse Koch, and Oskar Schindler.
Prisoner B-3087 is a Junior Library Guild book. [3]
Kirkus Reviews called Prisoner B-3087 "a bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe." [4] Publishers Weekly wrote that Gratz's "determination to be exhaustively inclusive, along with lapses into History Channel–like prose, threatens to overwhelm the story. But more often, Gratz ably conveys Yanek’s incredulity ..., fatalism, yearning, and determination in the face of the unimaginable." [5] Debra Gold, writing for the Jewish Book Council noted, "The language, sparse yet provocative, draws the reader in and, like Night by Elie Wiesel, poignantly shows the darkness of the Holocaust with always the possibility of hope and survival." [6]
Bank Street College of Education named Prisoner B-3087 one of the best books of 2014 for children ages 12-14. [7]
| Year | Award | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Best Fiction for Young Adults | Selection | [8] |
| 2013 | Goodreads Choice Award for Best Middle Grade & Children's | Nominee | [9] |
| 2013 | Cybils Award for Middle Grade Fiction | Finalist | [10] |
Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question.
Trzebinia is a town in Chrzanów County, Lesser Poland, Poland with an Orlen oil refinery and a major rail junction of the Kraków - Katowice line, with connections to Oświęcim and Spytkowice. The town became part of Lesser Poland Voivodeship after being part of Katowice Voivodeship (1975–1998). With population of 20,175, Trzebinia is an important industrial center. The town lies in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, 269 to 407 m above sea level. Trzebinia is a rail and road hub, and lies at a junction of the A4 Motorway and National Road Nr. 79. The distance to John Paul II International Airport Kraków-Balice is 30 kilometres.
The German camps in occupied Poland during World War II were built by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945 throughout the territory of the Polish Republic, both in the areas annexed in 1939, and in the General Government formed by Nazi Germany in the central part of the country (see map). After the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union, a much greater system of camps was established, including the world's only industrial extermination camps constructed specifically to carry out the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".
Płaszów or Kraków-Płaszów was a Nazi concentration camp operated by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków, in the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland. Most of the prisoners were Polish Jews who were targeted for destruction by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Many prisoners died because of executions, forced labor, and the poor conditions in the camp. The camp was evacuated in January 1945, before the Red Army's liberation of the area on 20 January.
Luise Danz was a Nazi concentration camp guard in World War II. Danz was captured in 1945 and put on trial for crimes against humanity at the Auschwitz trial in Kraków, Poland. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, but released due to general amnesty on 20 August 1957.
Georg Konrad Morgen was an SS judge and lawyer who investigated crimes committed in Nazi concentration camps. He rose to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major). After the war, Morgen served as witness at several anti-Nazi trials and continued his legal career in Frankfurt.
Eduard Wirths was the chief SS doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp from September 1942 to January 1945. Thus, Wirths had formal responsibility for everything undertaken by the nearly twenty SS doctors who worked in the medical sections of Auschwitz between 1942 and 1945.
Monowitz was a Nazi concentration camp and labor camp (Arbeitslager) run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1942–1945, during World War II and the Holocaust. For most of its existence, Monowitz was a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp; from November 1943 it and other Nazi subcamps in the area were jointly known as "Auschwitz III-subcamps". In November 1944 the Germans renamed it Monowitz concentration camp, after the village of Monowice where it was built, in the annexed portion of Poland. SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Heinrich Schwarz was commandant from November 1943 to January 1945.
Hans Wilhelm Münch, also known as The Good Man of Auschwitz, was a German Nazi Party member who worked as an SS physician during World War II at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1943 to 1945 in German occupied Poland. He was acquitted of war crimes at a 1947 trial in Kraków.
Miklós Nyiszli was a Hungarian prisoner of Jewish heritage at Auschwitz concentration camp. Nyiszli, his wife, and young daughter, were transported to Auschwitz in June 1944. Upon his arrival, Nyiszli volunteered as a forensic doctor and was sent to work at No. 12 barracks where he mainly performed autopsies. He was under the supervision of Josef Mengele, a Schutzstaffel officer and physician.
Identification of inmates in Nazi concentration camps was performed mostly with identification numbers marked on clothing, or later, tattooed on the skin. More specialized identification in Nazi concentration camps was done with badges on clothing and armbands.
Bernard Offen in Kraków, Poland is a Holocaust survivor. He survived the Kraków Ghetto and several Nazi concentration camps.
Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish professional photographer and a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. He became known as the "famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp." His life and work were the subject of the 2005 Polish television documentary film The Portraitist (Portrecista), which first aired in the Proud to Present series on the Polish TVP1 on 1 January 2006.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is a museum on the site of the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland.
Amon Leopold Göth was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of the camp's existence during World War II.
Adolf Theuer was a Sudeten German SS-Unterscharführer and gas chamber mass murderer at Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust. He was executed after the war as a war criminal.
Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig was a Polish Holocaust survivor who was interned during World War II at the Płaszów concentration camp where she was forced to work as a maid for SS camp commandant Amon Göth.
Laura Hillman was a German-born American survivor of Holocaust concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was also a Schindlerjude, who survived the Holocaust with the help of Oskar Schindler. She was also a writer and memoirist, as well as a lecturer on the Holocaust, and a docent at the Long Beach Museum of Art. In 2005, she published i will plant you a lilac tree – a memoir of a Schindler's list survivor, a young adult book about her experiences during the Holocaust.
Arnold Büscher was a German SS officer. Holding the rank of SS-Obersturmführer, he served as a commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, succeeding Amon Göth, from September 1944 until January 1945.
The Brünnlitz labor camp was a German forced labor camp which was established in 1944 just outside the town of Brněnec, Sudetengau. It operated solely as a site for an armaments factory run by the German industrialist Oskar Schindler, which was in actuality a front for a safe haven for Schindlerjuden. Administratively, it was a sub-camp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp system.