Brief outline of 'Once'
Once by Morris Gleitzman is a novel set in Poland during World War 2. It is told through the eyes of 10-year-old Felix, a Jewish boy in Poland in 1942 who is hiding from the Nazis in a Catholic orphanage. The only problem is that he doesn’t know anything about the war, and thinks he’s only in the orphanage while his parents travel and try to salvage their bookselling business. And when he thinks his parents are in danger, Felix sets off to warn them—straight into the heart of Nazi-occupied Poland. Soon after he leaves the orphanage, Felix rescues an orphaned girl, Zelda, and brings her along on his journey.
To Felix, everything is a story: Why did he get a whole carrot in his soup? It must be sign that his parents are coming to get him. Why are the Nazis burning books? They must be foreign librarians sent to clean out the orphanage’s outdated library. But as Felix’s journey gets increasingly dangerous, he begins to see horrors that not even stories can explain.
Despite his grim surroundings, Felix never loses hope. Morris Gleitzman takes a painful subject and expertly turns it into a story filled with love, friendship, and even humour.
Felix is a ten-year-old Jewish boy living in an orphanage in Poland during World War Two. He is determined to find his parents, but does not understand of the dangers of Nazi occupation. Because no one tells Felix the truth about the Nazis, he believes that he’s staying at the orphanage because his parents need to travel around to save their bookselling business. He enjoys making up stories, especially about his parents’ adventures, and comes to realise stories are powerful tools for endurance and survival. He is brave and resilient.
Zelda is a six years old girl whose parents were killed by the Polish resistance because they were Nazi collaborators. She i an orphan like Felix. After her parents are killed and her house burned to the ground by the Polish resistance, Felix finds her in her yard and rescues her on the assumption that Nazis killed her family. Felix tells Zelda stories to distract her from the violence all around them; while bossy, opinionated Zelda critiques and adds to Felix’s stories, she clearly also notices the violence and empathizes with the Nazis’ victims.
Barney is a Jewish dentist working and living in the ghetto in the city. He rescues Felix and Zelda and takes them to live in a basement where he is keeping other Jewish children safe. Unlike the other adults in Felix’s life, Barney reluctantly tells him the truth about Nazi atrocities, including concentration camps—but he doesn’t tell the younger children in his care. Barney is a brave and caring character who would do anything to protect the children.
Mother Minka is a stern nun, fond of corporal punishment, who runs a remote Catholic orphanage in Nazi-occupied Poland. Prior to the Nazi invasion, she used to buy books from Felix Salinger’s parents, a Jewish couple who owned a bookstore. When Felix’s parents decide to hide Felix from the Nazis at the occupation’s beginning, Mother Minka agrees to keep him at her orphanage, telling everyone he’s a Catholic orphan. Mother Minka tries to preserve the orphans’ innocence by concealing the truth about Nazi atrocities in Poland from them.
Dodie is an orphan who befriends Felix Salinger at Mother Minka’s Catholic orphanage and enjoys Felix’s inventive stories. Dodie doesn’t really understand what being Jewish means when Felix reveals that he’s Jewish and planning to escape the orphanage—he only tells Felix that he’ll miss him.
The Nazi Officer is a scowling, liquor-swilling character, who gives Barney food in payment for dental surgery. Felix tells him stories to distract him from the surgery, and the Nazi officer likes the story Felix tells so much that he asks Felix to write it down and give it to him later so he can send it to his children. While the Nazi officer performs a few things in the novel that, out of context, might seem kind, he’s complicit in a genocide against Jewish people even if Felix never sees him commit violent acts personally.