The Boy on the Wooden Box

by Leon Leyson

  I was permitted to stay in the same barracks as my father and brother. The terrible isolation and loneliness that had plagued me receded. The three of us shared a bunk, with David and me on the top and my father on the bottom. The Emalia factory operated around the clock, with mostly non-Jews working days and Schindler’s Jews assigned to the night shifts. Schindler had expanded his factory beyond pots and pans to producing war material. My brother and I worked through the nights on a machine that made casings for the detonators on bombs. Our shifts were twelve hours, with no breaks for meals. At times I struggled to stay awake doing the repetitive work. If I looked like I might drift off, David nudged me and vice versa. At dawn I ate my ration of bread, returned to the barracks, and fell exhausted into my bunk.

  It was on the “Jewish shift,” as the night shift came to be called, that I began to know Schindler personally. I had heard plenty of stories about the wild parties he threw in his offices on the second floor of the factory, parties that went late into the night. Now, at my workstation, I could hear the laughter and music. After the festivities, Schindler still had the energy to make his rounds of the factory. When he entered our work area, I could smell his cigarettes and cologne before I saw him. Always elegantly dressed, he would meander across the room, stopping to chat with men working at different stations. He had an uncanny ability to remember names. I had grown used to the fact that to the Nazis, I was just another Jew; my name didn’t matter. But Schindler was different. He clearly wanted to know who we were. He acted like he cared about us as individuals. Sometimes he paused at David’s and my machine and struck up a conversation. Tall and hefty, with a booming voice, he would ask me how I was doing, how many pieces I had made that night. He stood quietly waiting for my answer. He looked me in the eye, not with the blank, unseeing stare of the Nazis, but with genuine interest and even a glint of humor. I was so small that I had to stand on an overturned wooden box to reach the controls of the machine. Schindler seemed to get a kick out of that.

  I must admit his attention frightened me at first. Schindler was a Nazi, after all, and he had enormous power. When push came to shove, I reminded myself, he would side with his fellow Germans. That was to be expected. Furthermore, Schindler had our lives in his hands and could dispose of us at any moment.

  Gradually I began to fear him less and actually looked forward to his visits. Never knowing when he might stop by helped keep me awake and focused. I felt proud when Schindler talked with me, although my pride was tinged with anxiety. I think Schindler in fact took a shine to me. He would point me out to visitors and say that I was an example of how hard his Jews were working. I had had enough narrow escapes by then to know that it was best not to be conspicuous, not to stand out, not to make myself a possible target. So when Schindler singled me out, I still felt uneasy. Sometimes he would even gesture toward all three of us, my father, my brother, and me, and say we were “a family of machinists.” With a certain sense of pride, he would add, “experts,” although I knew that was an exaggeration in my case. Then an SS officer with a skull and crossbones on his hat and a loaded pistol on his belt would come closer and watch me work. I didn’t dare look up. I barely dared breathe. I knew that if I messed up, the punishment would be severe for all of us, simply because a Nazi was watching.

  Weak, malnourished, and sleep-deprived, I wasn’t much help to the Nazi war effort, but Schindler didn’t seem to care. One evening he stopped by my workstation and observed me as I stood on my wooden box completing a casing.

  “How many of those have you made tonight?” he asked.

  “About twelve,” I bragged. Schindler smiled and moved on, sharing a private joke with my father.

  Later I learned a truly skilled worker easily would have produced twice that number.

  On another occasion, as Schindler strolled across the factory floor, he caught me away from my station, watching a complicated machine as it was being redesigned to perform a different task. I was mesmerized by the intricacy of the procedure and didn’t realize how long I had been neglecting my work. I froze when I smelled the familiar cologne and cigarettes, wondering what I should do. In Płaszów, I would have been shot or at least lashed for such a blatant infraction, for being “a lazy and irresponsible” Jew. Instead, Schindler walked by without saying a word. A few days later I learned that my brother and I were to be transferred to the factory’s toolmaking area, which required higher skills and also meant we would be with our father. Rather than punishing me, Schindler had rewarded me for my curiosity.

  Sometimes, the morning after one of his late night visits, I would go to get my rations only to discover that Schindler had left word I should receive two portions. He had to make a special effort to do this, and I was overwhelmed by his kindness. Other times he stopped by my father’s workstation and put his hand on my father’s shoulder. He would say, “It will be all right, Moshe.” A true Nazi observing such an action, such humane treatment of a Jew, would have murdered them both without a moment’s hesitation. Yet Schindler would even linger to chat with my father for a few minutes at a time. Sometimes, after he left, my father would discover a half pack of cigarettes, a valuable gift Schindler had “accidentally” left by his machine. My father traded the cigarettes for bread.

  Such acts may seem insignificant given the scale of the evil in those years, but, in fact, they were anything but. Schindler dared to rebel against the law of the land, which was to torture and exterminate Jews, not to treat us as fellow human beings. To do that was to risk imprisonment in a labor or concentration camp or execution. Even referring to us by name rather than with a grunt and a curse was punishable. By treating us with respect, Schindler was resisting the Nazi racist ideology that constructed a hierarchy of humanity in which Jews were at the very bottom.

  All I knew was that Schindler may have been a Nazi, and therefore by definition dangerous, but he acted in a way that no other Nazi I knew did. Though I didn’t know what to make of it, I was impressed. I was also still wary of him. I had learned that human beings are frequently unpredictable.

  Since the summer of 1941, when Germany broke its pact with the Soviet Union, conquered Soviet-occupied territory and invaded the Soviet Union, a German victory seemed only a matter of time, but actually time was against the Germans. They had advanced so rapidly, the famous German strategy of Blitzkrieg, “lightning war,” that their supply lines couldn’t keep up with them. They had overestimated the speed with which they could defeat the Soviet army and underestimated the will to resist not only of the Soviet troops but also of the Soviet people. The German army wasn’t prepared for the brutally cold Russian winter. With the bloody Battle of Stalingrad—in which as many as two million soldiers and civilians were killed—the tide began to turn against the Germans. When we learned of the surrender of the German Sixth Army in early February 1943, we knew a German defeat was probable.

  If we could just hold on.

  By the summer of 1944, reports were circulating that the war had swung in favor of the Allies, mainly the Americans and the British to the west and the Soviets in the east. We got fragments of information from time to time and pieced together that the Allies had landed at Normandy and were mounting an assault in the west. In mid-July the Soviet Red Army had reached the prewar Polish border. That meant the Soviet army was nearing Narewka or was already there. Perhaps there soon would be news of Hershel and our other family members.

  When we found out German businessmen were packing their bags, leaving their factories, and fleeing Kraków with as much money and as many valuables as they could carry, we knew Germany was truly losing the war.

  One might think we would have celebrated the news, but, in fact, we were apprehensive about what it could mean for us. Would the Germans decide to murder all of us before they left? This was not an unwarranted fear. Rumors reached us that Płaszów and all its sub-camps were to be liquidated and the inhabitants sent to Auschwitz, a huge Nazi concentration and death camp. The odds of leaving Auschwitz a
live were almost zero.

  Then the news became much more troubling. Schindler’s factory would be closing, and he would start reducing his workforce. A list circulated with the names of those who were to be sent back to Płaszów. My name was on it. So were my father’s and David’s. That’s it, I thought. The end. I knew I couldn’t survive Płaszów again even if I was there with my father and brother. My mother was to stay at Emalia to help close the factory, but that was little comfort to her. How could she think of her good fortune when her husband and two of her sons were being sent to almost certain death? She broke into tears when my father told her we had been ordered to leave.

  My father tried to keep our spirits up. “Schindler has a plan,” he told us. “He’s going to relocate the factory to a town in Czechoslovakia and take us with him.” I just couldn’t believe any of it. I didn’t see any way Schindler could dismantle, move, and rebuild the entire plant. Why would he go through the complexities of transferring us when he could easily get other Jewish workers for free in his new location? Even if he wanted to take us with him, how could he possibly persuade the Nazi administrators, especially Amon Goeth, who had absolute final say over us, to go along with such a crazy scheme? I was convinced there was no way that Schindler could save us once we were back in Płaszów and under Goeth’s control.

  On the day we were to leave, there were about a hundred of us lined up in front of the guards who would oversee our return to Płaszów. I hid in the back of the group, as I often did, trying to be inconspicuous, particularly since I had been pretending to be years older than I actually was. Schindler showed up to see us off. Any other Nazi never would have bothered. As Schindler strolled past us in conversation with a German officer, I suddenly felt that I must do something, anything, to prevent our being sent back. I began to elbow my way forward to the front of the line, but I was too late. Schindler had already moved on. Impulsively I stepped in front of the line, within two steps of a German guard. I really had no idea what I was doing. Was I trying to get myself killed? The guard growled at me to get back in line. To be sure I did, he hit me with the butt of his rifle. Rather than hitting flesh, he knocked out of my hand the glass thermos bottle that my friend Mr. Luftig had given me as a parting gift.

  The thermos crashed to the cement with a loud, explosive clang. It drew Schindler’s attention immediately, and he turned around. That was my moment. “We are being sent away,” I cried. “My father and my brother and I!” Schindler immediately motioned for the guards to pull the three of us out of the line. We were ordered to return to Emalia.

  Schindler not only saved our lives, he did something more. After he left us, Schindler went to find my mother in the factory. He told her that there had been a mix-up and that we were staying. My mother later told me that at first she hadn’t believed him. She didn’t think he even knew who she was, but it turned out he did. When I think of all his many actions as a rescuer, big and small, it is this one act that first comes to mind; I think perhaps because it demonstrates such extraordinary compassion. He knew my mother would be distraught, and he knew that only he could comfort her.

  Now all four of our names appeared on the “list” of those who were to stay and help with arrangements for the transition. On that list my brother and father were numbers 287 and 289, and I was sandwiched between them at number 288. My mother was listed separately along with about three hundred other women.

  As the days passed, it became clear that Schindler really did plan to move his factory to Brünnlitz, a town in the Sudetenland of the former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) near his birthplace. It took unbelievable courage and ingenuity, not to mention enormous bribes, for Schindler to get the necessary approvals to disassemble lathes, punch presses, and other heavy equipment and transport all of the parts to that distant location. As the dismantling proceeded, it still felt like a fantasy to me, but my father’s faith in Schindler never wavered. He even hid a few provisions in the storage cabinet of his lathe so we would have something to eat if and when we arrived.

  While the machinery was being moved by train, Emalia closed and we, along with all the other Jewish workers, were sent back to Płaszów to await our turn to join Schindler. I trembled with fear as we passed through those gates of hell on earth. Heartsick, I went back to the same routine as before—up at five in the morning, stand in formation for hours, haul rocks, try to avoid drawing attention to myself, hear and see people be randomly shot. The only difference was now the Nazis’ focus had shifted. The Soviet army was drawing closer, and the Germans were throwing their energy into covering their tracks. During the next week, some workers, my brother David among them, had to exhume hundreds of bodies from the mass graves where they had been thrown and burn them.

  When he returned to the barracks, David was in a state of shock. He struggled to find the words to describe what he had seen. He wept as he told us that he literally had to reach down into the graves, lift out and carry the decomposing bodies to the burning pyres. We tried our best to comfort him, but we couldn’t make the memory of what he had seen or the stench of death he carried on his clothes and skin go away. David was barely seventeen.

  At Płaszów we briefly reunited with my sister, whose factory had also been closed. Of all of us, Pesza seemed to have held up best. She was young and strong and had been protected by her job, but the Nazi in charge of her company had taken his money, fled the area, and left his Jewish workers to their fate in Płaszów. Somehow Father dared to approach Schindler with one last request—that his much loved daughter, whom he had not seen in two years, be put on the list of workers going to Brünnlitz. Instantly Schindler agreed, and now a fifth member of my family was with us. Our luck seemed simply astonishing.

  I distinctly remember the date we left Płaszów for the last time. It was October 15, 1944. My father, brother, and I were packed into a cattle car along with other male workers bound for Schindler’s new factory. We were told the women would follow on a separate train. Guards sealed the doors, leaving us in darkness. We waited. My father, David, and I clutched hands. Suddenly the train lurched forward, causing us to lose our balance and pile on top of one another. Men cursed and groaned. It seemed the humiliation would never end. We recovered our balance and listened as the train picked up speed and headed west. I saw bits of light coming through the ceiling and walls. I hoped it might be a positive omen. After six years I was leaving Kraków, the city of my childhood dreams, the city that had become a nightmare, and was heading into the unknown.

  GROSS-ROSEN CONCENTRATION CAMP. ONLY one hundred seventy-five miles northwest of Kraków, but more than a million miles from the civilized world.

  October 1944.

  I am naked.

  My head is shaved.

  I am shivering from cold and fear.

  I am surrounded by total darkness.

  Gradually night turns to day. I am still naked, now sprinting past stone-faced guards, trying to prove to them how fit I am.

  Another day dawns.

  Now I am dressed in rags. I have no idea how long I’ve been here.

  Three days?

  Three weeks?

  I still don’t know.

  On the night we arrived from Kraków, we dragged ourselves out of the cattle cars and assembled on a vacant field. We were told to strip naked and leave our clothes where we stood. We were marched to the showers. By that time we had heard horrifying stories about showers spewing poisonous gas; but in this case, it was only icy water that dribbled out. After the shower our heads were shaved and we were sent back to the field to stand naked in the raw October night. We waited for something to happen, but nothing did. As the hours dragged by, we became colder and colder.

  To find protection from the freezing night we stayed tightly packed together. I burrowed my way into the middle of the group to the warmest spot in the midst of the bodies. If I stood still for too long, I found myself on the periphery again. Everyone was trying to do what I was, so we twisted and moved const
antly, a mass of humanity jostling in a never-ending quest to avoid freezing. Finding an opening, I would wriggle my way back into the middle again. Being small for my age had its advantages.

  Finally the guards shoved us into a barracks. We leaned against each other like stacked chairs. There was no room to lie down. At least with all of us packed together, it was warmer. I drifted off to sleep. The next morning we woke up in a heap, tangled together every which way. Still naked, we were assembled and processed like items of cargo. At one station we were given numbers. At the next station our body hair was shaved. When I stepped in front of the prisoner who was to shave me, he just laughed and motioned me on. I was still too frail and too malnourished to have gone through puberty. I must admit I was glad to be spared that particular humiliation.

  Next we had a “medical checkup,” which consisted of our running in circles past Nazi inspectors. It was a matter of life and death not to stumble or collapse from exhaustion. I was terrified by the inspection. Even if I passed this test, I knew I could be singled out at any moment, judged too small to do useful work and sent to my death. Somehow I made it through without falling and joined the rest of the men in our group. Eventually we were allowed to pick a few clothes from a heap of discards. I threw on a shirt and pants several sizes too big for me, grateful to have a little protection from the cold.

  None of us had any idea what our being in Gross-Rosen meant. Why were we there? How had this happened? Was this part of Schindler’s plan that he had kept to himself? Was it merely temporary, or was it our last stop? Had Schindler encountered obstacles even he couldn’t overcome?