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? Based on an astonishing true story.
Ruth Gruener was born Aurelia Gamser in 1930s Poland. Ruth and her parents survived the Holocaust by hiding in the homes of gentile families. After World War II was over, Ruth and her family moved to the United States, where Ruth tried to start an ordinary teenage life in Brooklyn. Ruth married Jack Gruener, another Holocaust survivor, with whom she lived in Brooklyn until Jack's passing in 2017. They have two children and four grandchildren. Ruth works as a docent at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in downtown Manhattan and travels all over the country to speak to schools about her and Jack's experiences in the Holocaust. From Prisoner B-3087:
I looked out through the cracks of the crawlspace. Goeth was coming closer, all shining black leather boots and crisp black uniform. One of his dogs lifted its ears and looked right at me.
I pulled back away from the wall. "We're trapped. We have to get out of here." I was almost choking onmy own fear.
"And go where?" Thomas hissed. "If we leave, they'll find us in the barrack!"
"I don't care. We can't be caught here."
I pushed my way up and out of the crawlspace. I gasped, filling my lungs. But if I didn't really want to die, I had to move quickly. My heart was thumping, but it made me feel alive, and feeling alive made me want to stay alive.
