by Leon Leyson
With each dead end, I felt an escalating fear. I did my best to hide it and appear strong for my mother, but sometimes she shook me awake at night because I’d had another nightmare, reliving those awful moments when my father was beaten before my eyes. I tried to keep from thinking the obvious: If the Nazis could beat him in front of all of us, what might they do to him when he was out of our sight? When I thought of him suffering, I even began to feel a little guilty for hoping that he was still alive. I didn’t want him to have to endure more beatings or to be tortured. Was there really any chance that he would ever return?
As days turned into weeks and the likelihood of finding Father deteriorated, our situation became increasingly desperate. My father had kept a savings account in a Kraków bank, but those funds had disappeared when all Jewish bank accounts became the property of the Nazis. Now what little money we had was nearly gone. We did have a meager emergency reserve, a secret stash of ten gold coins my grandmother had given my mother before we left Narewka. One by one, my mother traded the coins for food. All too soon the coins were gone, and with them, our only safety net.
My mother was frantic, beside herself with fear and anxiety. In a city occupied by the enemy, away from the protection of family in Narewka, she nearly broke down. Nights were especially difficult, for they were the few hours when she couldn’t busy herself feeding or caring for us. She tossed restlessly in the bed. I could feel her body shudder as she cried out, “What will we do? How will we live?” I felt determined to help her somehow, to relieve her anguish and to show her she could rely on me; but, as her youngest child, I doubt my reassurances gave her much confidence. She was on her own, weighted down with the staggering burden of sole responsibility for keeping her children and herself alive.
At the beginning of December 1939, the Nazis decreed Jews could no longer attend school. When I first heard of this new restriction, I felt a brief sense of freedom. What ten-year-old wouldn’t enjoy a few days off from school? But the feeling didn’t last long. I quickly realized the vast difference between choosing not to go to school for a day or two and being forbidden to ever attend. It was just one more way the Nazis sought to take everything of value away from us.
I now joined David and Pesza in looking for jobs. It wasn’t easy, since there were lots of other Jewish kids doing exactly the same thing. David managed to find work as a plumber’s helper, carrying his tools and assisting him in a number of ways. My sister worked cleaning houses. I started hanging out at a soft drink company, volunteering to put labels on the bottles. At the end of the day I received a single bottle of soda as payment. I took it home for all of us to share.
One afternoon, as I was returning from work, I spotted one of the Gestapo who had beaten my father. I was sure of it! I don’t know what possessed me, but I chased after him and begged him to tell me where he had taken my father. The intimidating figure stared down at me with disdain, as if I were less than a piece of lint on his coat. Had I known better, I would have been scared for my life. But I didn’t, and maybe my boldness impressed him, because he told me my father was at St. Michael’s prison. I raced to find David, and together we sprinted into the central city to the forbidding building. Sure enough, the authorities confirmed that our father was there. Though we weren’t permitted to see him, just knowing he was alive gave us a renewed sense of purpose. Somehow he had held on, and so could we. David and I spent most of our days going to the prison, taking with us packages of food carefully prepared and wrapped by my mother. As I think about it now, I realize the Gestapo officer could have lied to me and I would not have known, but for some reason he didn’t.
Several weeks later, for no apparent reason, my father was released from prison. The moment he came through our door was one of overwhelming relief and joy. At the same time, it brought an unexpected sadness. It was easy to see that what he had gone through had changed him. It wasn’t just that he was weak and gaunt; he was changed in a more fundamental way. The Nazis had not only stripped him of his strength—although he would find a great reserve of it in the years ahead—but also of the confidence and self-esteem that had put a spring in his step. Now he spoke little and walked with downcast eyes. He had lost his job at the glass factory, and he had lost something even more precious: his dignity as a human being. It shook me to the core to see my father defeated. If he couldn’t stand up to the Nazis, how could I?
As 1939 drew to an end, I realized that my father’s prediction had been wrong. Our situation seemed dire in every way. All signs pointed to the war going on for a long time. The Nazis were not content with what they had already inflicted on us Jews; each day brought a new humiliation. If a German soldier approached, Jews had to get off the sidewalk until he passed by. Beginning in late November, Jews who were twelve years and older were required to wear a white armband with a blue Star of David that we had to purchase from the Jewish Council, the governing body the Nazis had appointed to deal with all Jewish matters. To be caught without the armband meant arrest and most likely torture and death.
Since I was not yet twelve, I didn’t wear the armband identification; when I was old enough to wear it, I made up my mind not to. Even though my confidence had been shaken by what I had seen and experienced, there were times when I disobeyed the rules and thumbed my nose at the Nazis. In a way, I used their own stereotypes against them, since there was nothing about me that made it obvious I was a Jew. With my thick, dark hair and blue eyes, I looked like a lot of other Polish boys. Now and then, I would sit on a park bench just to prove I could do what I wanted, resisting the Nazis in my own small way. Of course, I couldn’t do that when anyone who knew me was around. The friends with whom I used to play now looked the other way when I was near. I don’t know if they would have betrayed me, but most likely they would have, in an attempt to obliterate their memory of how they had once been friends with a Jew. I watched them walk to school in the mornings as if nothing had changed, when for me, everything had. I was no longer the happy-go-lucky, adventurous boy who had gleefully looked forward to snatching a free ride on a streetcar. Somehow I had become an obstruction to Germany’s goal of world supremacy.
My father found his own way to defy the Nazis and to help us survive at the same time, even though it meant doing something illegal. He worked on the sly, off the books, so to speak, for the glass company on Lipowa Street. One day he was sent across the street, to Lipowa Street 4, to the enamelware factory where he sometimes had repaired tools and equipment before the war. The new owner, a Nazi, needed a safe opened. My father asked no questions. He simply pulled out the correct tools and quickly cracked open the safe. It turned out to be the best thing he ever did, since, quite unexpectedly, the Nazi offered him a job.
I have often wondered what my father thought at that moment. Did he feel relief or only a different anxiety about what this Nazi would ask him to do next? He knew that whatever wages he earned would never reach his hand, but would go straight to the Nazi. In other words, accepting the offer of a job meant working for free, but it also meant the chance of protection for himself and his family. There might be someone to stand between him and the next Nazis to come to his door. It was worth a try. Refusing really wasn’t an option. Maybe he sensed that there was something decent about this particular Nazi. Maybe, beaten down as he already was and ready to grab on to the thinnest lifeline of hope, he just thought, Do as you’re told. Don’t make trouble. Show your value. Survive.
Whatever his motivation, my father accepted the job on the spot. In doing so, he made a decision that had unimaginable consequences.
The Nazi businessman whose safe he cracked, who had just hired him, was Oskar Schindler.
OSKAR SCHINDLER HAS BEEN CALLED many names: scoundrel, womanizer, war profiteer, drunk. When Schindler gave my father a job, I didn’t know any of those names, and I wouldn’t have cared if I had. Kraków was filled with Germans who wanted to make a profit from the war. Schindler’s name meant something to me only because he had hired my fathe
r.
That fortunate encounter over the safe resulted in my father becoming one of the first Jewish workers at the company Schindler initially leased and then, in November 1939, took over from a bankrupt Jewish businessman named Abraham Bankier. In fact, of the two hundred fifty workers Schindler hired in 1940, only seven were Jews; the rest were Polish gentiles. Schindler renamed the company Deutsche Emalwarenfabrik, German Enamel Works, a name designed to appeal to German army contractors. He called it Emalia for short. Armies need a lot more than weapons and bullets to fight a war. As a clever businessman, Schindler seized the opportunity and began producing enamelware pots and pans for the Germans, a line of production guaranteed to generate a large ongoing profit, especially since his labor costs were minimal. He could exploit Polish workers at low wages and Jews for none at all.
Although my father didn’t bring home any money, he was able to bring home some pieces of bread or coal in his pockets. More importantly, his job gave us something else, something that I valued more, even when I was hungry and it was hard to think about anything other than the gnawing in my stomach. Working for Schindler meant that my father was officially employed. It meant that when he was stopped on the street by a German soldier or policeman who wanted to grab him for forced labor, to sweep the street or haul garbage or chop ice in winter, he had the necessary credential as protection. It was called a Bescheinigung, a document stating that my father was officially employed by a German company. It was a shield of protection and status. It didn’t make him invincible to the whims of the Nazi occupiers, but it made him a lot less vulnerable than he had been when he was unemployed.
I don’t know how much he knew about what my father did each day, but Schindler certainly realized he was a skilled, resourceful worker. His safecracking prowess had earned him Schindler’s respect. He kept on earning that respect day after day. Schindler knew little about the nuts and bolts of manufacturing and wasn’t interested in learning. He had employees to handle all that. My father worked long hours at Emalia and then put in second shifts at his old glass factory. Both were sources of small amounts of food. He also made arrangements with his gentile friend Wojek to sell a few of his fine suits on the black market. Wojek kept some of the money as payment for his efforts, but what remained was enough to provide us with a bit more to eat.
Meanwhile, in Kraków, the Germans tightened their grip on us. Jewish parents could no longer reassure children with the phrase “It will soon be over,” and a new phrase surfaced: “If this is the worst that happens.” My mother and father also adopted this saying as a tool of survival, perhaps as a way of keeping darker thoughts at bay. When forced to hand over our radio to the Nazis, we silently repeated the words; whenever a German was near, we whispered to ourselves, “If this is the worst . . .”
In the first months of 1940, I could still walk the streets of Kraków in relative freedom, even if no longer fearlessly. I could “pass” as a gentile because I was still young enough not to have to wear the identifying Star of David. Every day I watched the German soldiers in their field-gray uniforms who guarded a petroleum tank across the street from our apartment. I couldn’t help but be intrigued by them and by the well-polished rifles they carried. After all, I was an inquisitive kid. The soldiers, really not much older than I, were cordial, even friendly. Since I spoke German, I probably seemed pretty harmless to them. Having the occasional chat with me helped break the monotony of their days. They even let me inside the guard station a few times and shared a piece of chocolate from their rations.
However, German soldiers could change in an instant from cordial to brutal. If they were bored or had had too much to drink, they might single out a traditionally dressed Jew for a beating. Powerless to stop the abuse, I felt ashamed and confused whenever I witnessed such incidents. Why did the Nazis hate us so much? I had known many men, my grandfathers included, who were traditionally dressed Jews. There was nothing demonic or unclean about them, no reason for them to be subjected to such violence, but the message on Nazi propaganda posters plastered all over the city told a different story. With their distorted, lice-infested figures and captions of hate, they made it seem permissible, even proper, to attack a Jew even if he differed from the poster portrayal.
Then one night I experienced the soldiers’ wrath firsthand. Someone tipped them off that I, the very same boy who joked with them in German and whom they sometimes treated like a younger brother and allowed to hang out in their guard booth, was a Jew. As I was sleeping, they shoved their way into our apartment and grabbed me out of bed by the hair.
“What’s your name?” they shouted. “Are you a Jew?”
I replied that I was. They slapped me, furious that they had assumed I was a “normal” kid. Fortunately, they didn’t take the abuse beyond their slaps and abruptly left our apartment. I ran into my mother’s arms, shaking and crying, and this time I was the one who thought, If this is the worst that happens . . .
In May 1940, the Nazis began to implement a policy to “cleanse” Kraków, the capital of the German-controlled territory called the Generalgouvernement, of its Jewish population. The Germans decreed that only 15,000 Jews would be allowed to remain in the city. Over the next months, tens of thousands of frightened Jews departed for the outlying towns and villages from which many of them had so recently fled. Most went voluntarily, glad to be able to take a few of their possessions with them and relieved to escape the constant harangues and threats of the Nazis.
My parents tried yet again to put a positive spin on this new turn of events. They told us the departing Jews were going to better lives away from the city, where they would be in less crowded conditions and not have to endure the relentless harassment from German soldiers patrolling the streets. They even said that those who had left “voluntarily” had received money for food and travel.
I wanted to believe my parents, but my brothers and sister were not so easily convinced. If moving outside the city was so advantageous, my siblings asked, why were we always so determined to remain in Kraków? My parents had no answer to that. Later my brother David told me the frightening rumors: Those deported were not being sent to the countryside, but to their deaths. I was torn between believing these rumors must be false and knowing the Nazis were capable of anything. I only had to recall the vicious attack on my father to be sure of that.
So I felt a huge sense of relief when I learned my family would be able to stay in Kraków because of my father’s work and our residence permits. My father’s Bescheinigung from Emalia covered my mother, brothers Tsalig and David, and me. Pesza, who had been able to get a job at an electrical company, now had her own work permit. Still, we knew how fragile our security was in the face of constantly changing German rules and policies. Every time German soldiers banged on our door, we flashed the permits and held our collective breath for the brief but interminable inspections.
My father’s job at Emalia helped us in other ways too. He received lunch at the factory. He never ate all of it, no matter how hungry he was, and brought home whatever he could. Some days that bit of smuggled food made the difference between hunger and starvation. When the weather turned cold, my father managed to tuck a few pieces of coal from the factory furnaces in his pockets, even though it was forbidden to take anything from the factory grounds. During the long winter nights, those few pieces of coal provided our only heat as we huddled around the stove. Every Friday, without fail, my mother would light the Shabbat candles just long enough to say the evening blessings. Because the candles were nearly impossible to find even on the black market, she blew them out immediately after the prayers. But it was enough. During those brief minutes, with the glow of the candles, I felt a connection not only to my family beside me but also to my family in Narewka, to my favorite grandfather, and to happier days. The ritual affirmed who we were despite the humiliating restrictions outside our door. We could wait this out and survive, we thought, as long as we had each other.
The next months brought no goo
d news for those of us under Nazi occupation. The Nazis, however, loved bombarding us with their successes. Their triumphs were constantly announced on the radio, in newspapers, and even on big screens they set up to play newsreels with scenes of their victories. I remember going to the empty lot where there was one such screen and watching an endless parade of tanks and jubilant German soldiers as they rolled through the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France in May and June of 1940.
As 1940 came to an end, new rumors circulated. A ghetto would be built in a southern section of Kraków known as Podgórze. The area would be enclosed with high walls; the few gates would be guarded at all times by German soldiers. All the Jews remaining in the city would be forced to live in the ghetto and would not be able to leave unless given permission by the Germans. We knew that in Warsaw the Jews had already been forcibly relocated into a small area of the city, where they now lived in desperately overcrowded conditions. I tried to wrap my mind around this new possibility. How could this ever happen? It seemed impossible. All too soon the rumors became reality. I watched as twelve-foot-high walls went up, encircling an area of residential buildings not far from our apartment. The Nazis then ordered 5,000 non-Jews living within the area to move out so that 15,000 Jews—every Jew still in Kraków—could be crammed into these new quarters.
My father, ever ingenious, found a way to trade our apartment for one a gentile friend had inside the ghetto, hoping the swap might provide better accommodations than any the Nazis would arrange. In early March 1941, we piled our belongings onto a wagon we’d scrounged for the move and said good-bye to our apartment, the last tie to our once promising life in the big city.
