The Island on Bird Street

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of religious discrimination, graphic violence, substance use, bullying, illness and death, and physical abuse.

The next morning, a group of soldiers enters the ruins. They blast through the cellar and expose an underground bunker. Soldiers take people, including children, away. Alex is shocked that the whole time he was in the cellar, other people lived beneath him. He waits until evening to explore the bunker. He takes as much food as will fit in his larder along with cookware, kerosene, and a kerosene burner. He also takes advantage of the flushing toilet and a hot shower with water heated by a tin boiler and oil heater. The next morning, the German soldiers return and bomb the entrance to the cellar, making the path to the bunker impassable.

Alex gets a ladder from a nearby loft to use to get to the bird floor. Two months go by as he rations his food supply. Soldiers and looters raid houses along the street for any usable materials. Alex uses binoculars to see the Polish street behind Number 78 through the air vent. He soon familiarizes himself with all the people there: the policemen and the mailman, an abusive drunkard and his wife and children, a couple who runs a grocery store, several children whom others call a slur for Jewish people and who appear to have “Jewish eyes” but blond hair, a bullying boy who bosses others around, a girl who sits every evening to do homework, and a woman who cleans her apartment daily.