Once Character Analysis

Felix Salinger

Felix Salinger is a 10-year-old Jewish boy living in Nazi-occupied Poland. At the occupation’s beginning, Felix’s bookseller parents left him at an orphanage run by a customer, the nun Mother Minka. Mother Minka hides… read analysis of Felix Salinger

Zelda

Zelda is a young girl living in Nazi-occupied Poland. Zelda wears a locket containing a portrait of her parents with her father, a Nazi collaborator, wearing a Nazi uniform. After someone (likely the Polish resistance)… read analysis of Zelda

Barney

Barney is a Jewish dentist living in a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland. He hides Jewish children in a cellar in the ghetto to keep the Nazis from taking them and feeds them by earning… read analysis of Barney

Mother Minka

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… read analysis of Mother Minka

Dodie

Dodie (whose real name is “Dodek”) is an orphan who befriends Felix Salinger at Mother Minka’s Catholic orphanage and enjoys Felix’s inventive stories. The novel suggests that Dodie may have problematic violent tendencies: he… read analysis of Dodie

The Nazi Officer

The Nazi officer first appears when Barney takes Felix with him to perform dental surgeries under cover of night. Barney wants Felix to tell his patients stories to distract them from the pain of dental… read analysis of The Nazi Officer

Chaya

Chaya, whose name means “alive” in Hebrew, is one of the Jewish children that Barney is hiding from the Nazis in a cellar in the Jewish ghetto. One of her arms is bandaged. Later, she… read analysis of Chaya

Jankiel

Jankiel is a dark-eyed orphan who has recently arrived at Mother Minka’s remote Catholic orphanage. When he arrives, Mother Minka makes him promise not to tell the other children about the Nazi atrocities occurring… read analysis of Jankiel

Henryk

Henryk is one of the young Jewish children that Barney is hiding from the Nazis. When Felix first wakes up in Barney’s secret cellar, he hears Henryk crying for his parents and Barney suggesting that… read analysis of Henryk

Jacob

Jacob is one of the Jewish children that Barney is hiding from the Nazis. Because he blinks so much, Felix sometimes calls him “the blinking boy.” He figures out a method of piling mattresses so… read analysis of Jacob

Father Ludwik

Father Ludwik is a Polish Catholic priest who helps run Mother Minka’s orphanage. He has told Felix that Adolf Hitler is protecting them, confusing Felix about who Hitler is and leading Felix to pray… read analysis of Father Ludwik

Minor Characters

Moshe

Moshe is one of the Jewish children that Barney is hiding from the Nazis. Though only a little younger than Felix, Moshe never speaks; he is always chewing on a piece of wood that the novel implies is a fragment of his home, destroyed by Nazis.

Ruth

Ruth is one of the Jewish children that Barney is hiding from the Nazis. She has very curly hair that she wishes were neater, and she treats the younger children with maternal kindness. Eventually, she tells the other children that Nazis beat her father to death.

Janek

Janek is one of the children that Barney is hiding from the Nazis. A toddler, Janek illustrates how young many of the children were that the Nazis sent to concentration camps and killed.

Wiktor Radzyn

Wiktor Radzyn is a Catholic boy with whom Felix Salinger attended school before Felix’s parents decided to hide him at Mother Minka’s orphanage. After the Nazis take Felix’s parents away, the Radzyn family steals the Salinger family’s apartment and the possessions they left behind.

Once

Morris Gleitzman

Once Characters