The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson Read Free Book Online Page A

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 hewas 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 aninquisitive 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