The Jewish ghetto, the Wieliczka salt mine, concentration camps, death camps, the gas chamber, a death march ... Birkenau, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau ... No one could survive them all. Yet somehow Yanek Gruener did.
Sound unrealistic and unbelievable? It's not. Although Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz is a fictionalized YA novel, it is based on the true life story of Jack Gruener, who at the age of 13 decided that he was not going to die at the hand of the Nazis.
"In the place of my pain, I felt the stirring of determination.
I would not give up. I would not turn myself in. No matter
what the Nazis did to me, no matter what they took from me,
I would survive."
And he did.
I loved this book. Like The Hiding Place and The Diary of Anne Frank, this is a book everyone should read. It's that good.
Other, similar books you might want to check out: Destined to Live by Ruth Gruener and The Girl in the Green Sweater by Krystyna Chiger. Both are amazing stories of hope and survival.
