The Island on Bird Street

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of religious discrimination, graphic violence, and death.

In a brief introduction, Uri Orlev speaks directly to the reader, asking them to imagine a wall that divides the parts of a city and imprisons everyone forced to live there. He describes the terrible poverty and starvation inside this “walled-off quarter” and how, when he was young, he lived in a place just like that: the Warsaw ghetto in Poland during World War II. He tells the reader to imagine no radios, no supplies, very little food, and the unexplained disappearances of neighbors and family members. As families disappear, looters raid their abandoned homes for clothing, food stashes, and anything of value. The author informs the reader that he looted such houses himself in the ghetto; though he was searching for coal to keep his family members warm, he was happy to find toys and books like Robinson Crusoe.

Alex lives with his father in a small apartment in a ghetto in Poland during wartime. They are Jewish, and they share this space with another Jewish family, the Gryns. The German army, under Hitler, occupied Poland and established ghettos as places to confine the city’s Jewish residents.