Prisoner B-3087 (22 page)

whIle the story of Jack Gruener Is true —
and remarkable — this book is a work of fiction. As
an author, I’ve taken some liberties with time and
events to paint a fuller and more representative picture
of the Holocaust as a whole. All this was done with
Jack’s blessing so that the horrors and realities of the
Holocaust beyond those that he personally experienced would not be forgotten.

Jack did, in fact, survive the harsh conditions of the
Kraków ghetto by living in a pigeon coop with his
parents. He baked bread under cover of night with his
aunt and uncle, had his bar mitzvah in a basement, and
watched his parents deported by the Nazis, never to
see them alive again. At Plaszów, Jack hid under the
floorboards from Amon Goeth, and was inexplicably
spared by the madman when he emerged.

Even more incredibly, while Jack was at Plaszów, he
worked for a time at the very same enamelware factory
where German businessman Oskar Schindler later
saved hundreds of Jews from extermination. Schindler
was able to protect the Jews who worked there because
Goeth made enough money off the factory to look the
other way. But Jack was transferred away from Plaszów
a mere three months before Schindler began protecting
his workers from the Nazis. Jack only learned how
close he was to salvation years later, when the true
story of “Schindler’s List” was told.

Jack then went on to survive nine more concentration
camps. At Wieliczka, he toiled beside the famous salt
statues that became a tourist attraction after the war. At
Birkenau, he waited under the gas heads for death, only
to be showered with cold water instead. At Auschwitz,
Jack came face-to-face with the infamous Nazi monster
Josef Mengele and lived. Jack endured slavery and starvation, death marches and cattle cars, Allied bombings
and Nazi beatings. Of the more than one and a half million Jewish children living in Europe before the war,
Jack was one of only a half million to survive.

After the war, Jack immigrated to America and
became an American citizen. Less than a year after
he became a citizen, he was drafted into the U.S. Army
and sent to Korea to fight in the Korean War. There he
survived again— this time with a gun in his hands
and a pack on his back — all the while keeping up his
promised correspondence with the Gamzer family,
who had at last immigrated to America.

When Jack’s two years in the army were up, he came
to visit the Gamzers in New York City. He discovered
that little Luncia, the girl he had met in Munich who
always sat in the corner reading a book, had grown up
into a beautiful young woman. Jack fell in love with
Luncia — who had since changed her name to Ruth —
and in a few months they were married.

Jack and Ruth now live in Brooklyn, New York. They
have two grown sons and four grandchildren. Together,
Jack and Ruth travel the country to speak about their
experiences in the Holocaust. I had the pleasure of meeting Jack and Ruth while working on this book, and it is
my honor to write about Jack’s life so the generations
that follow will never forget. Jack still bears the tattoo
with the number the Nazis gave him—
B-3087
— but
it is
his
name, Jack Gruener, that lives on.