Prisoner B-3087 — Vocabulary
Alan Gratz
(Edited)

If I had gone straight home, if I had gone out to get our rations with my mother and father, things might have turned out very differently than they did.p.56.5alternate pages7 more

I resolved then and there not to speak again until I could find Moshe and talk to him privately.p.67.2alternate pages1 more

I had been so resolved to fight back, but I knew then that I wouldn't. To suffer quietly hurt only you. To suffer angrily—to fight back—was to bring hurt and pain and death to others.p.111.9alternate pages1 more

There were dozens of them, rag-and-bone skeletons who had perished of hunger, or thirst, or the cold, or suffocation, or overwork.p.125.9alternate pages1 more

The work was brutal, and the food too meager to sustain me.p.87.3alternate pages1 more

I was going to be alive when the Allies liberated us.p.168.4alternate pages1 more

The tight little crawl space under the floorboards suddenly felt like a coffin, like I was already dead and buried. My refuge from the nightmare of Plaszow was now a trap.p.92.3alternate pages1 more

I picked up the toothbrush reverently and cried as I held it in my hands. I remembered that day, standing at the pump in the camp—which camp had it been?—when I wondered when I had ever been so fortunate as to have something so simple as a toothbrush.p.249.7alternate pages

The work was brutal, and the food too meager to sustain me.p.87.3alternate pages

I saw a loaf of bread on the doorstep of another house, but it was gone before I could get it—snatched up by starving prisoners and devoured on the spot.p.224.8alternate pages

"Yanek, my son," he said, looking at me solemnly, "you are a man now, with all the duties of an adult under Jewish law. You are now responsible for your own sins, but also for your own goodness."p.46.8alternate pages

I would always yearn for them and remember them, but there was nothing left for me in Europe but ghosts.p.256.6alternate pages

The Nazis were walling us in.p.14.3alternate pages181 more

Hitler was always talking about the "Jewish menace" and how Germany and the rest of Europe should be "Jew free."p.3.3alternate pages4 more

The streets of the ghetto were empty when I finally headed home that day. The emptiness could only mean one thing—another Deportation.p.56.6alternate pages13 more

From now on, you have no name, no personality, no family, no friends. Do you understand? Nothing to identify you, nothing to care about. Not if you want to survive. You must be anonymous to these monsters.p.68.3alternate pages2 more

Water rained down on me. Freezing water so cold it made me scream. Water! Not gas! I was going to live! We celebrated as we shivered, hugging one another and shaking hands, all of us granted a last-minute reprieve by the Nazis.p.129.9alternate pages

Unless everyone comes to Zgody Square for selection, this ghetto will be liquidated!p.51.8alternate pages6 more

My friends, I come to you with a terrible request, but one which I have no choice but to accede to. The Nazis have ordered me to give them seven thousand Jews, to be deported from the Krakow ghetto tomorrow morning.p.39.9alternate pages

I tried to block out everything else and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.p.179.8alternate pages1 more