Daniel's Story

Carol Matas is the author of the 1993 novel for young readers, Daniel’s Story, and she published the book in conjunction with the United States Holocaust Museum Memorial exhibit Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story. Like the museum exhibit, Daniel’s Story presents a researched account of what it was like to grow up in Nazi Germany and live through the Holocaust. Before she wrote Daniel’s Story, Matas published two historical novels about the Dutch resistance during the Holocaust. Though Daniel’s Story is fiction, the events are real. The Nuremberg Laws, the Lodz Ghetto, and Auschwitz happened, making Daniel’s Story an example of historical fiction. Due to the subject matter, the main themes include dehumanization and genocide, survival and resistance, and lost innocence.

This guides uses the 1993 Scholastic edition of Daniel’s Story.

Content Warning: Daniel’s Story is about the Holocaust and describes the countless traumas of the genocide and Nazi-occupied Europe.

Plot Summary

Daniel is on the train, heading toward an unknown location (the Lodz Ghetto in Poland for Jewish people). He has a photo album with him and reviews the pictures in it. The first photo features his large family on his sixth birthday. On his birthday, Auntie Leah scolds him for goofing around during class, and his younger cousins knock over the castle he constructed.

Daniel is from a well-off family in Frankfurt, Germany, and his dad, Joseph, owns a hardware store, and people come from far away not just to buy this merchandise but to get his expert advice. The Nazis paint the word “Jew” on the store window, and Uncle Peter—his favorite uncle and the unofficial family photographer—arrives to tell him about the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, the concentration camps, and how the Nazis portray Jewish people as the source of Germany’s problems.

After the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, German Jews lose their citizenship and political rights. Soon, the Nazis ban Jews from schools, restaurants, and pools, but the Jewish community creates its own school and pool, and Daniel joins a sports club sponsored by Zionists—people who believe Jews need a country in their biblical homeland, Palestine.

Daniel tries to lead a normal life, but after he fights Hitler Youth boys and sees an antisemitic newsreel with his younger sister, Erika, he realizes the seriousness of the situation. The Nazis send Uncle Peter to Dachau due to two parking violations from years ago. They kill him and send Daniel’s family the ashes. Auntie Leah, Uncle Peter’s wife, gives Daniel Uncle Peter’s camera, and Daniel turns into the unofficial family photographer. He also takes pictures of the destructive antisemitism across Germany as evidence of the cruelty and dehumanization.

After a Polish boy kills a German official in France near the end of 1938, the Nazis organize a night of violence against the Jews, Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), and loot Joseph’s hardware store and then, along with other Jewish businesses in Germany, take it over.

The Nazis deport the Jewish people in Frankfurt to the muddy and smelly Lodz Ghetto. People die outside, and no one picks up the dead bodies for days. Joseph and Ruth, Daniel’s mom, ensure the family keeps their warm clothes and doesn’t eat their food all at once. The family listens to the forbidden radio, and the news of the Allies’ victories brings the family hope, as does Erika’s performance in the orchestra—Erika is a dedicated violinist.

Through Erika, Daniel meets plucky Rosa and falls in love. Daniel, Rosa, and Erika attend a youth group in Lodz and discuss good and evil, Palestine, and resistance. Rosa works at a sewing factory in Lodz and protests the empty soup servings. Erika and Daniel help make her resistance successful.

There are constant selections, where the Nazis transport people from the ghetto to horrible concentration camps with gas chambers. The Nazis put Auntie Leah’s youngest daughters on a transport, but Auntie Leah refuses to abandon them. A Gestapo (the secret Nazi police) official shoots and kills Auntie Leah and two of her daughters.  

With the Russians advancing, the Nazis liquidate the ghetto. Erika has bronchitis, and Ruth has tuberculosis, so Joseph doesn’t think they can hide in the damp cellar. He takes his chances by going on the transport with them. Daniel and his cousin Friedrich (Leah’s eldest son) stay behind and hide, but on the way to the hiding place, Nazis catch Daniel and put him on a train to Auschwitz.

Auschwitz is a nightmare: chaotic, violent, and deadly. Prisoners not sent to the gas chambers work long hours without adequate clothing or food. Daniel spots his family and reunites with his dad, who thinks Ruth and Erika died in the gas chambers. Daniel sees Erika playing her violin in the concentration camp band. She looks like a lifeless skeleton, but when she sees her dad and big brother are alive, her spirit returns—though she’s transported to another camp and dies after the Russians liberate it.

Adam, a boy from the Lodz Ghetto, makes Daniel a part of the resistance. He gets Daniel a camera, and Daniel takes pictures of the fiery pits of corpses and the storehouses full of the inmates’ hair and valuables. The point of the photos is to get the Allies to bomb the camp, but they don’t. Instead, the resistance blows up one of the crematoriums. Fearing capture and torture, Adam steals a gun from a Nazi and dies in a shootout.

As the Allies continue advancing, the Nazis march the prisoners out of Auschwitz. The march is brutal, and many prisoners die—it’s known as the death march. Eventually, Daniel and their dad enter Buchenwald—a concentration camp in Germany. Daniel becomes an assistant to a photographer who takes pictures of families of Schutzstaffel (SS), the elite Nazi security force . He and his dad also join the resistance. With the war almost over, the resistance stages a revolt, and a Nazi shoots Joseph in the arm (it’s not serious), and Daniel shoots at Nazis and almost kills them. Before American soldiers arrive, the prisoners take over the camp and give them chocolate and cigarettes.

Now free, Daniel, his dad, and Peter (another boy from Lodz), take a train back to Lodz. At a stop, they leave the train to walk around, and antisemitic Polish farm boys attack Daniel and Peter. Daniel takes out his gun and regains control of the situation, but Peter dies. Daniel promises Peter he’ll go to Palestine, and when he reunites with Rosa outside his former building in Lodz, they declare their love for one another and make plans to live in Palestine.