Man from the Other Side Summary

The Man from the Other Side

The book titled "The Man from the Other Side" tells the story about 14 years old Polish child, named Marek. He lived with his mother and his stepfather Antony in Warsaw during World War II.

One day Marek's mother told him that he had to help Antony, who was a smuggler of food and guns to the Jewish ghetto to carry those things. Marek had some problems with his stepfather because he doesn't see him as a real father although he raised him. Marek never calls him father because he knew that he was betraying his real father Bronislaw Jarowski that was a communist, and had died in prison. So once he was out of school, he would help him smuggle food and guns to ghetto even if they would take a long time to come back home. Every time Marek was back home, he would have dreams or nightmares about what he had seen there.

One day when Anthony and Marek were about to enter the sewers from their basement Pan Krol, their neighbor saw them. He started to ask them questions about where they were going and he had figured out that they were helping the Jews that were in the ghetto put by the German Nazi soldiers who wanted Jews to die from hunger. By the end of each month the Germans would kill many of them. Also if anybody knew a Jew, they had to tell the German Police called Gestapo, so they could put them in the ghetto or kill them and the people that blackmail Jews would get a money reward. But nobody was blackmailing them because Polish nation hated German Nazis and also Jews were paying high prices to hide them from the Germans. Pan Krόl said that he would keep a secret and he won't tell anyone if Antony would give him money. Antony knew that he would want more and more money as the days would pass by and then blackmail them anyway. He couldn't take the risk of him and his family by hoping that he wouldn't tell, so he killed him and put a Star of David around his neck so nobody would think that Antony had killed him.

Wacek and Janek were Marek's friends who were robbers. One day they saw Marek walking down the street early in the morning. When they met, they saw a Jew passing by them. Wacek asked the stranger to give him the money, and if he would refuse, he would tell the Gestapo that he was not one of them. Wacek, Janek and Marek took the money and put them into their pockets. Later on that day when Marek's mom was cleaning his pants she found the money and thought of what was going on. She got really mad at him from robbing a poor Jew. Mother had given him the thought, that now that Jew had probably nothing to eat because he didn't have any money. Marek felt so bad and ashamed of himself for what he had done that instead of going to school he went to church and prayed to God for forgiveness.

He was coming to church everyday before school had started and he noticed a man that was crossing himself the wrong