Gratz, Alan - Prisoner B-3087 by Gratz Alan

Author:Gratz, Alan [Gratz, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

After the shower, nothing seemed to matter as much to me. I knew it was a game to the Nazis — kill us, don’t kill us, to them it didn’t really matter — but even so, I was glad I had made it through.

I had been ready to die. But when water came out of those showers, not gas, it was like I was born again. I had survived, and I would keep surviving.

I was alive.

The Nazis lined us up, still naked and shivering. First they shaved our heads. With our hair gone, we all looked alike — young and old. Next they marched us to a different room, where soldiers waited at tables with what looked like big oversized pencils with wires attached to them. As we worked our way toward them, person after person, I could hear screams of pain ahead of us. I had no idea what they were doing to us, but they weren’t killing us. That was all that mattered, I told myself. I could handle pain.

By the time I got to the head of the line, I understood what was happening. We were being tattooed. I watched as the man ahead of me had letters and numbers carved into his skin in black ink with an electric needle. When it was my turn, the Nazi with the tattoo pencil grabbed my arm and started to write. The pain was awful as he dragged the vibrating needle over my skin, but I knew better than to cry out or beg him to stop. Besides, nothing could be worse than what had already happened to me. I had been in a gas chamber. I had looked up into a showerhead and waited for death to come, and it had passed me by. I was alive. A tattoo was nothing to me. Not in that moment.

B-3087.

That’s what the Nazis carved into my skin. B for Birkenau, 3087 for my prisoner number. That was the mark they put on me, a mark I would have for as long as I lived. B-3087. That was who I was to them. Not Yanek Gruener, son of Oskar and Mina. Not Yanek Gruener of 20 Krakusa Street, Podgórze, Kraków. Not Yanek Gruener who loved books and science and American movies.

I was Prisoner B-3087.

But I was alive.

After the room where we were tattooed, we were taken to another room with a huge pile of old, used prisoner uniforms, and told to find something that fit. The soldiers made us run, beating us with clubs if we took too long to find new pants and a shirt, so we took whatever we could as fast as we could. I ended up with pants that were too short and a shirt that was too big, but I was lucky to get a pair of wooden shoes that fit. That was important. Shoes were everything in the camps. I moved fast and wasn’t beaten. I could play the game as well as anybody. I had made it this far, hadn’t I? I was alive.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.