The Boy on the Wooden Box (6 page)

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 father.

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 good 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.

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.