Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz

Pages: 272

Genre:  MG, YA, Historical Fiction

Source: Purchased

From Goodreads:

Survive. At any cost.

10 concentration camps.

10 different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly.

It's something no one could imagine surviving.

But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face.

As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner -- his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087.

He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages all around him. He encounters evil he could have never imagined, but also sees surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror. He just barely escapes death, only to confront it again seconds later.

Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will -- and, most of all, his sense of who he really is inside?

My Thoughts:

I have read a lot of Holocaust books.  I enjoy learning the history.  It makes me grateful each day for what I have and the great country I live in. I am not sure I would have the courage and hope to survive the atrocities that Yanek had to survive.  When all he saw around him was death, he chose to survive.

This book was recommended to me by a student. I am so glad I listened to  him.  Our eighth grade team does a Holocaust unit each year.  I am recommending this to them as a book to add to their unit.  This is a definite must read for young and old alike.