The Boy on the Wooden Box (8 page)

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.

In the next days we heard that the train had gone to a camp named Belżec, where rumor had it people were being gassed. I remember wondering,
How long will Tsalig be able to hold his breath in the gas chamber? Will it be long enough to survive?
All I could do was pray that somehow my dearest brother had been spared or had found a way to escape.

I HEARD A SHOT AND then another. I felt A bullet whiz past my ear; it pierced the wall behind me. I quickly ducked into the alcove entrance of the nearest building, my heart racing. More shots rang out. Had I been hit? How would I know? I had once been told I might not feel it if I were shot. I only knew I was terrified. I banged on the door I was standing in front of and waited. What was going to happen next? Was the soldier reloading? Did he now have me in his sights? The door creaked open an inch. I pressed hard and pushed myself
inside, begging, “
Prosze, prosze.
” “Please, please.”

“What were you doing out there?” the man asked gruffly as he shut the door behind me. I tried to answer, but I couldn’t get the words out. I stared at my shaking hands. There was no blood on them. I felt my chest, my legs, my head. I was alive. I had not been hit after all. Tears rolled down my cheeks. “I was trying to help,” I finally answered.

Earlier that evening my friend Yossel and I had carried an elderly woman on a stretcher to the ghetto infirmary, but we had made a dangerous miscalculation. We had waited too long at the infirmary with her before heading home and had stayed out past the evening curfew, the hour when all Jews had to be off the streets. To reach our apartment building, we had to round a corner by one of the ghetto gates where several guards always stood on sentry duty. As we ran as quickly as we could toward that corner, one of the guards lowered his rifle and aimed at us. Driven by instinct and fright, Yossel and I ran, splitting off in different directions, barely escaping the shots. The guard probably lost interest in us as soon as we disappeared from his
view, but I wasn’t ready to take another chance with my life. I spent the night with strangers, curled up on the cold floor, terrified and very much alone, glad that I had not been shot.

When I finally made it home early the next morning, my mother flung her arms around me. Most of the time my mother kept her emotions under control, but in that moment she sobbed hysterically. The thought of losing another son was just too much for her.

The transports had emptied the ghetto of many of its inhabitants, including not only the Luftigs and my brother Tsalig, but also Samuel and Yossel’s father, Mr. Bircz, who had shared his family’s food with me. As a result, space was no longer an issue, but other dangers escalated. Hunger overwhelmed us all. Disease spread unchecked, weakening, crippling, and killing indiscriminately. There was an overpowering sense of futility. Bribes had not protected even the wealthier people in the ghetto. Everyone had lost someone they loved.

By this time survival was mostly a matter of pure luck.
What worked in one’s favor one day might not the next day, or even the next hour or second. Some people still thought they were smart enough to outmaneuver the Nazis, that they could navigate through the maze and survive the war. Actually there was no sure way to make it through a world that had gone completely insane.

In late October 1942, news of another transport reached Schindler, so he kept his Jewish workers at the factory overnight instead of sending them back to the ghetto. He knew the fragile work permit was no guarantee of safety during the roundups. Pesza also spent the night at her factory, which meant my mother and I were alone in our apartment. My mother and Mrs. Bircz had devised a strategy they hoped would protect us. They decided to hide in plain sight, sweeping and cleaning the courtyard, looking busy and useful. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bircz’s sons, Yossel and Samuel, and I would hide in the crawl space of a storage shed behind our building. It was a tight fit, since there were only about ten inches between the rafters and the roof.

In the morning the ghetto reverberated with sounds of the
Aktion
, the roundup: gunshots, shouts in German, doors banging, and heavy boots on the stairs. My mother and Mrs. Bircz put their plan into action. They quickly began sweeping the courtyard as if their lives depended on it, which, in fact, they did.

Yossel, Samuel, and I crawled up into our hiding place. With scarcely room to breathe, my friends and I tried to stay motionless and silent as we waited. Lying on a rafter, I could see only the floor of the shed below. All I could do was listen as screams and shots filled the air. The noise grew steadily louder as the soldiers neared our building. The German Shepherds used to ferret out people in hiding were barking ferociously. Their handlers ignored pleas for mercy and killed indiscriminately. I covered my ears, trying to block out the shrieks and moans and cries of “Please!” and “No!”

Suddenly my mother appeared in the shed. She had intended to bring us a teapot with water and then return to the courtyard; but as the Nazis approached, some sort
of survival instinct clicked in. She set down the teapot and climbed into the crawl space with us. Packed tightly together, we prayed we would not be discovered. Then a horrifying realization entered our heads. We all stared down at the floor. In her rush to hide, my mother had left the teapot right below us. If the Nazis entered the shed, spotted it, and became suspicious, they would surely look up and discover our hiding place. We lay motionless for a long, long time. I closed my eyes, imagining bullets penetrating the rafters and tearing holes in me. We were such easy targets.

After several hours the screams stopped. Occasional shots rang out, but they came at longer and longer intervals. We seemed to have escaped the worst for now, but we didn’t dare move. When it grew dark, we heard a man’s voice in the courtyard, saying, “It’s safe now. You can come out.” My eyes met my mother’s. She whispered a barely audible, “No.” I understood immediately. It could be a trap. We would stay put.

That night a numbing chill descended on the ghetto.
Yossel, Samuel, my mother, and I clung to each other in the darkness, teeth chattering. We lay awake, too frightened to sleep or give in to our need for a bathroom.

The following day the SS—an organization that began as Hitler’s personal bodyguard and grew to have vast authority over the “Jewish question”—continued to patrol the ghetto. We could hear the random shots, the dogs, the screams. My mother’s instinct had been correct. The
Aktion
was not over. I wasn’t sure I cared anymore. I was at my end. Hunger, thirst, and fear had thoroughly depleted me. All I could do was think of that teapot of water my mother had left on the floor below. I tried to convince her that I could jump down, grab it, and bring it back up without being noticed, but she would have none of it. Shivering from cold and fear, the four of us remained in our cramped refuge until dusk. The hours seemed interminable.

Finally we heard another voice in the courtyard. “Chanah Leyson,” a man called out. “I was sent by Moshe Leyson.” Startled, we stirred from our half-conscious
state. I searched my mother’s eyes. She was unsure what to do. “Is Chanah Leyson here?” he asked again. “I work at the factory with your husband, Moshe.” Reassured by twice hearing my father’s name, my mother nodded to me, and finally, after almost two full days, we dropped down from the rafters. Pain shot through my legs as I landed on the floor. I grabbed the teapot and swallowed a few gulps of water before passing it on to Yossel and Samuel. Stiff and sore, the four of us emerged from our sanctuary exhausted, thankful to still be alive.

Her voice hoarse and weak, my mother called out to the man. “Here,” she cried. “I am Chanah Leyson.” She and the man spoke together quietly as my friends and I nervously surveyed the deserted courtyard. Were we really safe? Were we the only ones still alive?

Without a word, Yossel and Samuel dashed inside our building to search for their mother. Their apartment was empty; their mother was nowhere to be found. She had been seized in the roundup. Yossel and Samuel would have to rely on their own resources. They were not the
only youngsters left to fend for themselves in the ghetto. Of course, adults helped them in many ways, but basically the boys knew that drawing as little attention to themselves as possible was their best chance of survival.

In the late evening, my father, David, and Pesza returned to our apartment with scraps of bread in their pockets. I tore into the food even before I hugged them, but forced myself to stop so that we could all share the meager morsels. My father delivered the latest news. He, David, and Pesza had been ordered to report immediately to the Płaszów labor camp, about two and a half miles from the ghetto. For the first time since our family had been forced into the ghetto some eighteen months before, the five of us still together were to be separated.

As the population of the ghetto continued to diminish, officials began to reorganize those of us remaining. In December, my mother and I were transferred from Ghetto B, the section where we had been living, to Ghetto A, the area now designated for workers. A barbed-wire fence went up, dividing the two sections of the ghetto. Then the relocation
began. We were ordered to take only what we could carry and find a living space for ourselves in Ghetto A.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed the precious parting gift that Mr. Luftig had given me, his thermos. I also carried a jacket and a blanket. It broke my heart to leave behind Mr. Luftig’s treasured pipes. Before we left our apartment, my mother had me help her drag out the pieces of our furniture we hadn’t used as fuel to the balcony and push them over the railing. The cabinet, table, and chairs splintered to pieces as they crashed to the concrete courtyard. My mother had decided she wasn’t going to leave anything valuable or useful to the enemy if she could help it. Once again I was impressed by my mother’s cleverness and courage. It felt so good to do something against the Germans, even if the only thing we could do was destroy our own possessions.

My mother waited until the very last minute to cross over to Ghetto A, rushing back to our building one last time for a cooking pot, which she wrapped in a sheet. I could hardly believe that she would take such a risk for a mere pot, but
going back for it gave her one more moment to survey her kitchen and what had been our home.

Initially, we found no place to stay in Ghetto A. Door after door closed in advance of our arrival. Every apartment was filled to capacity. Eventually we found two spots in an attic. We squeezed into a space with other relocated workers from Ghetto B, sleeping in rows on the floor. My mother and I shared a single blanket. Our situation now made our room with the Luftigs seem like a mansion by comparison.

Somehow, in these terrible circumstances, my mother and I found the will to persevere. We had to keep going for each other. Each morning my mother went to her cleaning job, and I went to the brush factory. When we said goodbye, I wondered if it might be for the last time. Every time I returned from work and found her there waiting, I felt there was still hope. Each night we prayed that my father, David, and Pesza were safe, that Hershel and our extended family were still secure in Narewka, and that Tsalig had somehow escaped and found a safe hiding place.

Then, in March 1943, the Nazis liquidated the entire ghetto. All of us remaining were to be sent to Płaszów. At least, that was the rumor. Honestly, I was glad to be leaving, thinking that once again the five of us would be together. I had no concept of what Płaszów was. I felt a naïve confidence that because I had a real job, I was protected. On the day we were to be transferred, the Germans ordered us to line up in groups according to our work assignments. My mother stood with the cleaning women; I stood with my group from the brush factory. I saw my mother pass through the gates without incident; when my turn came, a guard yanked me out of line. He clearly thought I was too young and too puny to be useful. “You’ll go later,” he said, pointing me toward a group of other children gathered off to the side, out of the formations. My work permit was useless.