by Alan Gratz
It was hard to leave my new family when the papers finally came through in March of 1948. But I had spent years trying to get to America, and I was determined to go. Youzek, Hela, the Gamzers, and I had an emotional farewell before I boarded the train that would take me to the coast, where I would catch a ship to the United States. The Gamzers planned to come to America too, when they could, and I promised to stay in touch.
It had been almost a decade since the Nazis had rolled into Kraków. And almost that long since I’d last seen my mother and father, my uncles and aunts and other cousins. But they were gone now. I would always yearn for them and remember them, but there was nothing left for me in Europe but ghosts. I had said good-bye to all of them long, long ago.
I stepped on board the train and didn’t look back. For nine years I had done everything I could to survive. Now it was time to live.
While the story of Jack Gruener is true — and remarkable — this book is a work of fiction. As an author, I’ve taken some liberties with time and events to paint a fuller and more representative picture of the Holocaust as a whole. All this was done with Jack’s blessing so that the horrors and realities of the Holocaust beyond those that he personally experienced would not be forgotten.
Jack did, in fact, survive the harsh conditions of the Kraków ghetto by living in a pigeon coop with his parents. He baked bread under cover of night with his aunt and uncle, had his bar mitzvah in a basement, and watched his parents deported by the Nazis, never to see them alive again. At Plaszów, Jack hid under the floorboards from Amon Goeth, and was inexplicably spared by the madman when he emerged.
Even more incredibly, while Jack was at Plaszów, he worked for a time at the very same enamelware factory where German businessman Oskar Schindler later saved hundreds of Jews from extermination. Schindler was able to protect the Jews who worked there because Goeth made enough money off the factory to look the other way. But Jack was transferred away from Plaszów a mere three months before Schindler began protecting his workers from the Nazis. Jack only learned how close he was to salvation years later, when the true story of “Schindler’s List” was told.
Jack then went on to survive nine more concentration camps. At Wieliczka, he toiled beside the famous salt statues that became a tourist attraction after the war. At Birkenau, he waited under the gas heads for death, only to be showered with cold water instead. At Auschwitz, Jack came face-to-face with the infamous Nazi monster Josef Mengele and lived. Jack endured slavery and starvation, death marches and cattle cars, Allied bombings and Nazi beatings. Of the more than one and a half million Jewish children living in Europe before the war, Jack was one of only a half million to survive.
After the war, Jack immigrated to America and became an American citizen. Less than a year after he became a citizen, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Korea to fight in the Korean War. There he survived again — this time with a gun in his hands and a pack on his back — all the while keeping up his promised correspondence with the Gamzer family, who had at last immigrated to America.
When Jack’s two years in the army were up, he came to visit the Gamzers in New York City. He discovered that little Luncia, the girl he had met in Munich who always sat in the corner reading a book, had grown up into a beautiful young woman. Jack fell in love with Luncia — who had since changed her name to Ruth — and in a few months they were married.
Jack and Ruth now live in Brooklyn, New York. They have two grown sons and four grandchildren. Together, Jack and Ruth travel the country to speak about their experiences in the Holocaust. I had the pleasure of meeting Jack and Ruth while working on this book, and it is my honor to write about Jack’s life so the generations that follow will never forget. Jack still bears the tattoo with the number the Nazis gave him — B-3087 — but it is his name, Jack Gruener, that lives on.
Copyright © 2013 by Alan Gratz, Ruth Gruener, and Jack Gruener
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gratz, Alan, 1972–
Prisoner B-3087 / by Alan Gratz. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
“Based on the true story by Ruth and Jack Gruener.”
“While the story of Jack Gruener is true — and remarkable — this book is a work of fiction. As an author I’ve taken some liberties with time and events to paint a fuller and more representative picture of the Holocaust as a whole.” — Afterword.
Includes a biographical afterword.
Summary: Based on the life of Jack Gruener, this book relates his story of survival from the Nazi occupation of Kraków, when he was eleven, through a succession of concentration camps, to the final liberation of Dachau.
1. Gruener, Jack — Juvenile fiction. 2. Jews — Poland — Kraków — Juvenile fiction. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Poland—Juvenile fiction. 4. Holocaust survivors — Poland — Juvenile fiction. 5. Kraków (Poland) — History — Juvenile fiction. [1. Gruener, Jack — Fiction. 2. Jews — Poland — Kraków — Fiction. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) — Poland — Fiction. 4. Holocaust survivors — Fiction. 5. Kraków (Poland) — History — Fiction. 6. Poland — History — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G77224Pri 2013 813.6 — dc23
2012012460
First edition, March 2013
e-ISBN 978-0-545-52071-3
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Kraków, Poland 1939–1942
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Plaszów Concentration Camp 1942–1943
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Wieliczka Salt Mine 1943–1944
Chapter Thirteen
Trzebinia Concentration Camp 1944
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Birkenau Concentration Camp 1944–1945
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1945
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Death March 1945
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1945
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp 1945
Chapter Twenty-Four
Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1945
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp 1945
Chapter Twenty-Six
Death March 1945
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dachau Concentration Camp 1945
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Munich 1945
Chapter Thirty
Afterword
Copyright
nds
