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Chapter 35
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Milkweed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Relationships
War, Dehumanization, and Innocence
Ingenuity, Resilience, and Survival
Family
Summary
Analysis
One day, Uri unexpectedly joins Misha in the ghetto. He smacks Misha to make sure he’s listening and instructs him to get out of the ghetto, out of Warsaw. Misha notices that, unlike the ghetto kids, Misha has no scabs or boils, and he’s wearing clothes and shoes. Uri explains that deportations are starting soon: the Nazis are clearing out the ghetto, taking the people away on trains. This sounds good to Misha, but Uri squeezes Misha’s neck and warns him that he doesn’t want to know where the trains are going. Whatever Misha does, Uri continues, he mustn’t get on a train—he needs to keep running instead.
Uri is in conspicuously better shape than the sickly, poorly fed ghetto kids. He also has more information than they do, and despite his disappearance from Misha’s life, he still cares enough to try to forewarn him. The trains are likely going to transport Jews to concentration camps, but Uri’s news doesn’t register with Misha—he thinks that the deportation trains sound like a means of escape, not a portent of something awful.
Themes
Uri tells Misha not to stop for anything—that he’s not a Jew or a “Gypsy,” he’s nobody. He makes Misha repeat this. Then, he gives Misha a chocolate buttercream and walks away. Misha tells the orphan boys and his family about Uri’s warning. Mr. Milgrom comforts Janina, assuring her that there won’t be trains, and that there’s nothing more the Nazis can do to them.
Uri’s point in telling Misha that he’s “nobody” is that this is the only hope Misha has to escape—to slip out under the radar. But Misha, who by this time has developed strong bonds with his friends and adoptive family, is no longer able to think in a self-centered way. Meanwhile, the rumors about deportation seem too ominous to be believed.
Themes
