{"id":4513,"date":"2026-01-04T00:31:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/prisoner-b-3087-gratz-alan\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T00:31:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:31:06","slug":"prisoner-b-3087-gratz-alan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/prisoner-b-3087-gratz-alan\/","title":{"rendered":"Prisoner B-3087 – Gratz, Alan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I<\/b>f I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o\u2019clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them.<\/p>\n

But I was ten years old, and I had no idea of the nightmare that was to come. None of us did. It was the beginning of September, and we all sat around the big table in the dining room of my family\u2019s flat on Krakusa Street, eating and drinking and talking: my parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and me, Jakob \u2014 although everybody called me by my Polish name, Yanek.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The Jews must disappear from Europe.\u2019 That\u2019s what Hitler said,\u201d Uncle Moshe said, reaching for another pastry. \u201cI don\u2019t know how much more clear he could be.\u201d<\/p>\n

I shivered. I\u2019d heard Hitler, the German fuehrer<\/span>, give speeches on the radio. Fuehrer<\/span> meant \u201cleader\u201d in German. It was what the Germans called their president now. Hitler was always talking about the \u201cJewish menace\u201d and how Germany and the rest of Europe should be \u201cJew free.\u201d I was a Jew, and I lived in Europe, and I didn\u2019t want to disappear. I loved my house and my city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe British and the French have already declared war on him,\u201d my father said. \u201cSoon the Americans will join them. They won\u2019t let Germany roll over all of Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s already annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia,\u201d said Uncle Abraham. \u201cAnd now he invades Poland!\u201d<\/p>\n

My father sipped his coffee. \u201cMark my words: This war won\u2019t last more than six months.\u201d<\/p>\n

My uncles argued with him, but he was my father, so I believed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnough politics,\u201d my mother said. She got up to clear the table, and my aunts helped her. \u201cYanek, why don\u2019t you put on a show for us? He built his own projector.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ran to my room to get it. It wasn\u2019t a film projector like the one at the movie theater. It was a slide projector I\u2019d made by mounting a lightbulb on a piece of wood and positioning wooden plates with lenses from magnifying glasses in front of it. I could show pictures on the wall, or do shadow-puppet shows. My cousins helped me hang a white sheet in the doorway of the sitting room, and when everyone was seated I plugged in the projector and clicked on the radio. I liked to have musical accompaniment, like a movie sound track. When the radio warmed up, I found a Count Basie song that was perfect and started my show.<\/p>\n

Using cardboard cutouts of cowboys, Indians, stagecoaches, and horses I\u2019d glued to sticks, I projected a shadow show about a sheriff in the American Wild West who had to protect his town from bandits. John Wayne Westerns were my favorite films, and I took all the best parts from his movies and made them one big story. My family laughed and cheered and called out to the characters like they were real. They loved my shows, and I loved putting them on for them. I was never prouder than when I got my father to laugh!<\/p>\n

Maybe one day I would go to America and work in the movies. Aunt Gizela would often ruffle my wavy hair and say, \u201cYou look like a movie star, Yanek \u2014 with your dark-blond hair and big eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was just getting to the part where the bandit leader robbed the town bank and was squaring off for a shoot-out with the hero when the music on the radio stopped midsong. At first I thought the radio\u2019s vacuum tube had blown, but then a man\u2019s voice came on the radio.<\/p>\n

\u201cLadies and gentlemen, we interrupt this broadcast with the news that the German army has reached Krak\u00f3w.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo!\u201d my father said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo soon?\u201d Uncle Moshe said. \u201cIt\u2019s been only six days! Where is the Polish army?\u201d<\/p>\n

I came out from behind the sheet in the doorway to listen. While the radio announcer talked about Polish forces withdrawing to Lodz and Warsaw, there was a big BOOM<\/span>, and my mother\u2019s teacups rattled in their saucers. My cousins and I ran to the window to look outside. Dark smoke curled into the sky over the rooftops of Podg\u00f3rze, our neighborhood. Someone cried out on the next street, and the church bells of Wawel Cathedral rang out in alarm.<\/p>\n

It was too late. The Germans were here. If I had only known then what I know now, I would have run. I wouldn\u2019t have stopped to pack a bag, or say good-bye to my friends, or to even unplug my projector. None of us would have. We would have run for the woods outside of town and never looked back.<\/p>\n

But we didn\u2019t. We just sat there in my family\u2019s flat, listening to the radio and watching the sky over Krak\u00f3w turn black as the Germans came to kill us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Book Preview If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn\u2019t have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o\u2019clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-4513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alan-gratz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}