Prisoner B-3087

Yanek is walking beside a boy who reminds him of Fred. He realizes this boy won’t last much longer on the walk because he’s too weak and emaciated to keep pace. He takes the boy under his arm and helps him walk. He realizes that if “we shared the load, we would all make it, even this nameless boy” (176). He asks the other prisoners to help him, but most ignore him. Finally an older man volunteers to help, and Yanek’s faith in humanity is slightly restored.

As Yanek helps carry the boy’s weight, he feels himself losing too much energy. He’s desperately hungry and looks forward to eating what’s left of his bread ration. When they finally stop walking for the day, Yanek realizes that he’s lost his bread. He considers eating the boy’s bread since “he’s mostly dead already” (181). He instantly feels ashamed by this thought. In the morning the boy doesn’t even thank Yanek for helping him.

They finally reach their destination, but Yanek doesn’t if he survives or dies because he’s so hungry and tired. The Nazi guards give the prisoners soup and bread. Learning from his past mistakes with the lost bread, Yanek clings to his food “like it was a precious jewel, hoarding it like a dragon” (187).

In the morning Yanek realizes the entire camp is littered with dead bodies. Despite being so desensitized to death, he remembers the small comforts from his former life, like his toothbrush. The present trauma has taught him that “even the simplest of possessions seemed like treasures now” (188).

The Nazi guards line up the prisoners outside while they sit inside and watch them. The prisoners aren’t allowed to move. When one man wipes the snow from his face, he is beaten by the guards. They make him do the “Sachsenhausen salute” (189), meaning he is forced to squat with his arms out or be killed. He finally falls over, and the guards beat him again. Another man commits suicide by throwing himself into an electric fence to the amusement of the guards.

Yanek is once again on a train to a new concentration camp. The cramped space grows roomier as more and more prisoners fall to the floor in death. The commander of the new camp sends half of the men to die because they’re too weak for work, and he orders the other half to rest so that they can regain their strength for work.

Yanek and the other prisoners who are ordered to rest eat meaty soup and bread. This makes their stomachs hurt. The next day Yanek trades his soup for bread to avoid stomach pains, and he soon regains his strength. He begins working again only to be punched in the face by a guard named Moonface, who hits him for no reason. Yanek volunteers to be shipped to a new camp to avoid Moonface’s purposeless violence.

Yanek arrives at a camp where “death came in many guises” (204). There is a zoo in the middle of the camp. It’s supposed to entertain the Nazi guards and their families, but it makes Yanek bitterly realize that the animals are treated better than the prisoners. This realization makes him feel even more numb.