About Alan Gratz: Alan Michael Gratz is the author of eight novels for young adults. Gratz currently lives in western North Carolina.
And you wanted to escape,' a man near me whispered to another man. 'You wanted to run off into the woods and fight. But do you see? Do you see what the rest of them think about us? These people would sell you back to the Nazis for a sack of potatoes ...
I shook with helplessness and rage, but also with fear. This was what fighting back earned you. More abuse. More death. Half a dozen Jews would be murdered today because one man refused to die without a fight. To fight back was to die quickly and to ...
The ceremony was fast so we wouldn't be caught. When it was over, the men all whispered 'Mazel tov' and climbed back onto their shelves. I went up to the boy and pressed the wooden horse into his hands, the only present I could give him. The boy look...
I had survived the work gangs in the ghetto. Baked bread under cover of night. Hidden in a pigeon coop. Had a midnight bar mitzvah in the basement of an abandoned building. I had watched my parents be taken away to their deaths, had avoided Amon Goet...
Remember: You are no one. You have no name. You do not speak, you do not look at them, you do not volunteer for anything. You work, bot not so hard they notice you. Gizela. Zytka. Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and w...