The Boy on the Wooden Box

by Leon Leyson

  Unlike our first trip through Kraków over two and a half years ago, when we had ridden through the streets on the horse-drawn cart with a sense of excitement and anticipation, this time we felt only dread. As we approached the gates of the ghetto, I was seized by panic. I looked up at the high walls and saw that, with their flair for the sadistic, the Nazis, in the last few days, had topped the walls with rounded stones that resembled headstones on graves. Their implicit message was that we were moving into what would become our own cemetery. I could scarcely tear my eyes from the symbols of death that “welcomed” us. I stole a glance at Tsalig for reassurance, but he kept his gaze directed downward and wouldn’t meet my eyes as we passed by the guards and through the gate.

  Once inside the ghetto, we made our way to our new home, a building at Lwowska 18. We carried our few belongings up the stairs to the one-room apartment awaiting us. When we arrived, a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Luftig, met us at the door. They were two of the Jews who had been expelled from Germany and had somehow made their way to Kraków. The ghetto authorities, unaware of the exchange my father had made on the side, had assigned them to this apartment. Although my parents were unhappy about the arrangement, they didn’t dare question it for fear of retaliation by those in charge. Instead, we coped, as all Jews in the ghetto tried to do. My father hung a blanket in the middle of the room, separating the six in our family from the Luftigs. While my mother and sister unpacked the few items we were able to bring with us, my brothers and I left the crowded room to familiarize ourselves with our new neighborhood and see what we could learn. We were determined to make the best of the situation. What else could we do?

  A few days after we moved to the ghetto, the Nazis sealed the gates, locking us inside. Still, we thought, If this is the worst that happens . . . If only.

  “SOMEDAY I WILL TAKE YOU to America, where my son lives,” Mr. Luftig promised me as we sat together cleaning his pipes on his side of the blanket dividing the apartment. In my first year in the ghetto, I often sat down beside Mr. Luftig. A patient and generous man in his mid-fifties, Mr. Luftig loved to tell me stories about his son’s life in New York City, a fantasyland of endless opportunities, an abundance of food, and few restrictions against Jews. Once his seven or eight pipes were cleaned, Mr. Luftig proudly lined them up on a table. I stared at his collection with admiration. There were straight pipes, curved pipes, and even a pipe with a lid on it. It didn’t matter that Mr. Luftig had no tobacco to put in them. The pipes symbolized an orderly and civilized world beyond the control of the Nazis.

  Mrs. Luftig was a quiet, uncomplaining woman. She and my mother became friendly and sometimes shared the cooking duties. Working together in those hopeless conditions somehow lessened the despair. What went on inside our apartment was replicated thousands of times in the ghetto as we struggled to keep our lives and our dignity in the face of random killings, devastating diseases, worn-out clothing, and near starvation.

  Since some 15,000 people were jammed into an area meant to house 5,000, at most, the sanitation system was deplorably inadequate. The indoor plumbing we had once taken for granted now was an unattainable luxury. Lines were long for the few outhouses, and in the winter, by the time I finished, my feet were nearly frozen. The crowding, poor nutrition, and lack of hygiene made disease rampant; from typhus to scarlet fever, from malnutrition to psychosis, illness of some kind struck nearly every family.

  To Nazi eyes, we Jews were a single, detested group, the exact opposite of the blond, blue-eyed, pure “Aryans.” In reality we were not their opposites at all. Plenty of Jews had blue eyes and blond hair, and many Germans and Austrians, including Adolf Hitler, had dark eyes and hair. But Nazi dogma grouped Jews as one, as the loathed enemy of the Aryans. For them, being Jewish was not about what we believed, but about our so-called race. It made no sense to me, and I even wondered how Nazis could believe such contradictions themselves. Had they taken the time to really look at us, they would have seen human beings just like themselves: some with blue eyes, some with brown. They would have seen families just like their own: sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, craftsmen, and tailors, individuals from all walks of life.

  The Nazis had forced us into impossibly crowded conditions designed to bring out the worst in people. Despite everything against us, we remained determined to show respect and decency toward one another. Retaining our humanity, cherishing our heritage, we fought the depravity of the Nazis with subtle forms of resistance. Rabbis resisted by conducting services on Jewish holy days. Doctors and nurses resisted by fighting to save the lives of the ill and injured and by bringing new life into the world. Actors and musicians resisted by creating makeshift stages in hidden courtyards and performing plays and skits and holding concerts, affirming that beauty and culture could exist even in the midst of the horrible circumstances of the ghetto.

  I remember chinning myself on the top of a fence to see one such comedy show filled with gallows humor. Even when I didn’t quite get the jokes, I laughed anyway because it was a way to show the Nazis they didn’t control me. It also made me feel better for just a few minutes. Jews resisted the bleak surroundings by sharing their hopes and dreams and stories with one another, as Mr. Luftig did with me.

  Some people resisted by falling in love. Couples courted and married; babies were born. Romances blossomed despite the oppression that surrounded us. It happened to my brother Tsalig. He fell in love with Miriam, the daughter of a brush maker, who lived with her family in an apartment building behind ours. For my seventeen-year-old brother, romance was an entirely new experience and a wonderful diversion from the ghastliness of ghetto life. For me, his romance wasn’t quite such a positive, since it meant I now had to share my brother with someone else. As a result, I could get a little mean. “Her face is pretty, but I don’t like her legs,” I once griped to Tsalig—as if he had asked for my opinion. He could have gotten mad or defensive, but instead he just laughed and nudged me on the shoulder, saying, “One day you won’t be so critical when it comes to girls.” With that, he was off again to meet Miriam, to stroll hand in hand, maybe to make plans for a future life together.

  During Tsalig’s absences, I found ways to keep myself busy. I went to a secret Hebrew school in a rabbi’s darkened apartment. I made friends with other boys my age, including Yossel and Samuel, whose father, Mr. Bircz, was a shoemaker. They lived in the apartment below ours. My friends and I played cards and explored the maze of alleyways in the area. We staged spontaneous “shows” of our own in the courtyard behind our building, and I mimicked a comedy routine with a hat teetering on my head. I suspect my imitation was pretty poor, but my friends laughed all the same.

  I even taught myself (sort of) to ride a bike. A man in our building had a bike parked outside his apartment. One day he asked me to clean it for him. In exchange, he promised to let me take it for a spin. Though I had never ridden a bike, I was intrigued. After I finished scrubbing and polishing the bike, I climbed on, stretched my legs to reach the pedals, and wobbled a few feet before falling over. I got back on, and when I finally thought I had gained my balance, I pushed off on what was my boldest attempt, steering around the corner and gaining speed. I felt almost airborne, flying down the street. For those few seconds I was not a prisoner in a Nazi ghetto, trapped behind high walls, but a twelve-year-old boy like any other, relishing the mix of danger and excitement. Not even the inevitable end to my ride—when I crashed to the pavement, gashing my forehead—dampened my spirits or my enthusiasm.

  Such diversions were precious few. I spent most of my time focused on the critical task of finding food. Every day I combed the sidewalks and alleys looking for a crust of bread or anything else edible in the attempt to combat my constant hunger. It’s hard to believe that my family survived even the first weeks in the ghetto, given how little food we had. My mother concocted a variety of soups, all with water as the main ingredient, and my father, whose work permit allowed him to leave the ghetto to
work in Schindler’s factory several blocks away, tried to bring back a potato or piece of bread. I still remember standing by his side every evening as he emptied out his pockets, praying that buried in the lining might be some extra food we could share. Sometimes food was available on the black market, but one had to have something to exchange. The Nazis provided limited amounts of bread but not much else.

  Mr. Bircz, the shoemaker downstairs, had dealings outside the ghetto. One day he returned from a customer with galareta, a Polish dish of jellied chicken feet. Although they had little enough themselves, the family shared their meal with me. Even with a special treat like that, my raging appetite didn’t subside. I was hungry, really hungry, all the time. Sleep became my only relief, the only time I wasn’t thinking about eating, but frequently visions of food filled my dreams.

  My family had already spent our safety net of gold coins, and my father’s savings had disappeared. All we had left to barter were the last of my father’s suits. When we were most desperate, Father once again asked his friend Wojek, who lived outside the ghetto, to sell one on the black market. As before, after taking a cut for himself, Wojek gave us the remaining coins.

  Other Jews were better off than we were. Some had come to the ghetto with money or jewelry that they could trade for food. A wealthy woman in the apartment above ours occasionally asked me to run errands for her. One day when I returned to her apartment, she took out an entire loaf of bread and cut off a thick slice for me as payment. I watched in astonishment as she liberally spread butter over the bread. It never occurred to me to eat this unexpected treasure all by myself. Instead, I took it straight to my mother. She scraped off the butter, cut the bread into thinner slices, and then spread the butter on each smaller piece. The whole family shared in this rare treat. That was a good day.

  Without valuables of our own, my family’s only hope to fend off starvation was work, since work meant food, maybe soup at lunchtime and sometimes a small chunk of bread to take home. Each of us contributed however we could. In return for food, Tsalig continued to repair hot plates and other electrical items. Later on, he worked in Miriam’s father’s small brush-making business, which produced all kinds of brushes: bottle brushes, shoe brushes, and large brushes for scrubbing. He also did piecework at home, earning a little money or food for each item he produced. Pesza worked at the electrical company outside the ghetto, and from time to time, she, too, brought back bread or a potato or two. My mother cleaned the offices of the Jewish Council and of the Nazis who had offices inside the ghetto.

  One day my father summoned the courage to ask Schindler to hire my brother David, then fourteen, to work in his factory, and Schindler agreed. Every day Father and David would leave and return together, sometimes with morsels of food or a piece of coal. Now I stood between them each evening, hoping against hope that their pockets weren’t empty.

  Thanks to Tsalig, who was always looking out for me, I, too, started working for the brush maker, stringing bristles through a board to make brushes for the Germans. Since I was only twelve, it might seem that I was young to be working full-time, but I didn’t think of myself as a child anymore, nor did anyone else. I needed to contribute to my family’s survival any way I could.

  Did our family talk about the future or make contingency plans in case the situation got worse? In fact, we didn’t. We couldn’t think two minutes ahead when all our energy was concentrated on surviving to the next day. We stayed in the moment, determined to make it through the day unharmed. I kept up my single-minded obsession with finding food, to the point where I had no time or room in my mind for other thoughts. Our goal was staying alive long enough for the Germans to lose the war and leave defeated.

  My father may have been terrified for our safety, but he kept his feelings hidden behind an impenetrable expression. He rarely spoke and some days barely acknowledged us. He would return from a long day of work, empty his pockets of whatever he had been able to get, and then collapse into bed. In contrast, Mr. Luftig remained outwardly cheerful. If we had a piece of coal burning in the oven, he would sit in front of it and warm his hands, with one of his pipes dangling from his mouth. That was his greatest pleasure, even though the pipe was empty. Sometimes my mother would break the silence and state what we were all thinking: “How will we make it through the winter?” she asked repeatedly to no one in particular. “How will we make it?” I had absolutely no idea.

  At Schindler’s factory, my father picked up rumors about the war from the gentile workers. He pieced together different bits of information from which he could track the movements of the German army and speculate on what the Allied forces in Europe, led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—no longer a partner with Germany—might be planning. Although we continued to hope the German army would soon be defeated, we couldn’t begin to know what would happen next. The scraps of information we received were frequently contradictory.

  In May 1942, we had our first taste of the even worse suffering to come. The Nazis announced there would be a transport from the ghetto to the countryside and encouraged us to volunteer to leave the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions for the fresh air and open spaces. Some 1,500 Jews volunteered to go, thinking that anything must be better than the squalid environment they were in. By June, however, the Nazis were past the nicety of asking for volunteers; instead, they demanded that all “nonessential” Jews, which meant mainly the elderly and those without jobs, vacate their apartments and leave on the transports. So far, my father’s work papers from Schindler’s factory had protected our family from deportation, but the Luftigs were not so fortunate. With little warning, they were ordered to pack their belongings and report to the main square of the ghetto. There was no time to help them prepare or even to exchange goodbyes.

  As the deportation proceeded, I rushed downstairs to the shoemaker’s apartment to get a street-level view of what was happening. Scores of our friends and neighbors, including some of the boys with whom I had studied Hebrew and watched the makeshift comedy skits, silently walked down the main street toward the train station. I peeked over the windowsill and searched for the Luftigs. Eventually they trudged by, suitcases in hand. I meant to wave, to send them an encouraging sign, but I froze in fear when I saw the German guards marching beside them, prodding them along with their rifles. Mr. Luftig stared straight ahead, showing no emotion. Did he see me out of the corner of his eye? I couldn’t tell. I could only hope. Gradually the Luftigs disappeared from sight, swallowed in a sea of thousands. I remained in my spot by the window until the last of the deportees passed by. Then, with a heavy heart, I climbed the steps to our apartment. “They’re gone,” I said sadly to my mother, telling her what she already knew.

  “He left you this,” replied my mother, handing me an old-fashioned, glass-lined thermos bottle. Then I pulled back the blanket separating our side of the room from the Luftigs’ side, and I saw that he had left something else.

  His exquisite pipes. A tremor ran down my spine. Mr. Luftig had determined that whatever his destination, he wouldn’t be needing his pipes. It was a disturbing omen.

  A week later the Nazis had another train waiting and began to round up more Jews. Evictions, they called them, not deportations. This time the deportees didn’t go quietly. Escapees from earlier deportations had furtively returned to the ghetto with stories of trains filled with people entering a camp and leaving empty, even though the population of the camp never increased. The more firsthand accounts we heard, the more we began to realize what was happening. It was terrifying. So the next time the Nazis started rounding up Jews, chaos erupted. Soldiers rampaged through the ghetto, demanding that people show the required identification and shoving anyone who couldn’t into the streets teeming with fellow unfortunates.

  On June 8, German soldiers burst into our building and once again forced their way into our apartment. They shouted, “Schnell! Schnell!”—“Fast! Fast!”—as my father shakily presented his work permit. He had gotte
n a Blauschein, a “blue sheet” or Gestapo-issued permit, added to his identification card, which we hoped would again exempt all of us from deportation. Now that Tsalig was seventeen, he needed a Blauschein of his own. Tragically he did not have one. If only we had had a few minutes’ warning, we would have found a way to hide Tsalig. But it was too late. I felt my blood turning to ice when I realized they were going to take my brother. In a split second the soldiers pounced on him. I wanted to scream, No! and leap to his rescue, but I knew it would be suicide, and I knew that I would be endangering all our lives. The soldiers pinned Tsalig’s arms behind his back and shoved him out the door. In the span of a minute, my beloved brother was gone.

  I have replayed those minutes in my head countless times. We should have been better prepared. We should have had a hiding place and practiced to be ready for just such a situation. But the roundup happened to us as it did to so many others in the ghetto, without warning and with no time to prepare or react. The shock of Tsalig’s arrest hadn’t even begun to register when he was already gone. Seventy years later I can still see him in my mind’s eye as the Nazis dragged him from the room.

  In the film Schindler’s List, there is a scene where Oskar Schindler rushes to the train station to save his accountant, Itzhak Stern, who had been seized in a roundup. Schindler reaches the depot barely in time to yell Stern’s name and pull him off the train just as it starts to move. What the film doesn’t show is another scene that Schindler told my father about afterward. As he was frantically searching the cattle cars filled with people, looking for Stern, Schindler spotted Tsalig and recognized him as his worker Moshe’s son. He called out to him and told him that he would get him off the train, but Tsalig was there with his girlfriend Miriam. Since no one in Miriam’s family was working for Schindler, there was nothing he could do to save her. Tsalig told Schindler that he couldn’t leave Miriam. That is the kind of young man he was. He wouldn’t desert his girlfriend even when it would have secured his own safety.