Then

Then is the second book in a seven-novel series that follows protagonist Felix Salinger from his childhood in Nazi-occupied Poland in World War II to old age in Australia. In the first installment of the series, Felix spent over three years at a Catholic orphanage; he was left there by his Jewish parents, who were trying to protect him from persecution. Felix’s parents owned a bookstore, and they instilled a great love of reading and storytelling in their son. Because of this, when Nazis burned books in the orphanage, Felix took it as a sign that his parents were in danger, and he set out to find them. As he traveled, Felix was confronted again and again with Nazi atrocities, forcing him to mature and move from childish denial to acceptance of his situation. Along the way, Felix met Zelda, a young girl whose parents were Nazis killed by the Polish resistance, and the two children formed a close bond with each other. Felix and Zelda were forced into a ghetto and were taken in by Barney, a kind Jewish dentist who took care of orphans. (The character of Barney is based on Polish Jewish educator and author Janusz Korczak, who ran a Jewish orphanage and refused to abandon the children, opting out of preferential treatment by the Nazis and dying in a death camp alongside the children he loved.) In Morris Gleitzman’s series, the Nazis eventually began to send all of the residents of the ghetto to death camps; like Korczak, Barney does not abandon the orphans. Felix and Zelda escape the train with their friend Chaya, but Chaya is shot and killed by soldiers on the train.