Friedrich Schneider

The novel's protagonist, Friedrich is born in 1925 to reclusive Jewish parents a week after the Christian narrator's birth. The Schneiders occupy the apartment one floor above the narrator's in Johann Resch's home. The boys become close friends, enjoying games and sports, even as the Nazis increase restrictions on Jews. Friedrich accompanies the narrator to a Nazi Jungvolk meeting and invites him to his Bar Mitzvah just before his thirteenth birthday. Jews are segregated in their own schools and other rights. Friedrich's civil service father bounces back from his firing to become manager of a department store, and Friedrich has one of the finest bicycles around. Friedrich's mother dies after being injured during a 1938 pogrom, his farther loses his job, and Friedrich organizes a home business repairing electrical lamps. Their landlord evicts them from their vandalized apartment, but the Schneiders remain - and take the monumental risk of...