84 pages • 2 hours read
Leon LeysonThe Boy On The Wooden Box
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 Summary
In the spring of 1938, when Leon is eight years old, he goes with his mother and siblings to live with his father in Kraków. Moshe has been away since Leon was three years old, so Leon is very happy to see him and excited about the new life in the big city—especially since he has never traveled before. The family settles in a two-room apartment near the father’s factory that, while spartan, is more advanced than their home in Narewka. Since he has been away, Hershel has matured in his behavior and outlook and now has a girlfriend. Leon makes several new friends, and together they enjoy pulling mischievous pranks such as getting free rides on streetcars. All in all, the family becomes well integrated into the life of the city.
However, there are ominous signs of unrest. The newspapers are full of accounts of the antisemitic measures taken by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany, including the expulsion of thousands of Polish Jews from Germany and the harrowing events of Kristallnacht. There is growing alarm that Germany and Poland will go to war. Some families in Leon’s neighborhood stock up extra food and prepare bomb shelters. Some Jews flee eastward, wanting to get as far away from Germany as possible.
On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s army invades Poland. To avoid the possibility of conscription into forced labor by the Germans, Moshe and Hershel leave the family and head back to Narewka. Several days later, on September 6, Leon sees German forces camped at the bridge over the Vistula River, poised to enter Kraków.
Chapter 2 Analysis
In this chapter, Leyson expands his narrative from the simple, peaceful rural world of Narewka to the wider, more exciting, but also more dangerous world of Kraków. This widening of the author’s perspective reflects his younger self’s growing awareness of the treacherous political environment taking shape around his family, and these descriptions will lead inexorably to the tragic experiences of the Holocaust. By creating a gradual approach to the atrocities to come, Leyson recreates the slow intensification of his family’s unease and growing alarm as world politics catapulted them toward World War II.
To this end, Leyson also contrasts the excitement and novelty of his new life in Kraków with ominous foreshadowing of the war to come. He describes the sights and cultural attractions of the city, which were far different from the small town he grew up in, but although he had good friends among the Christian children, he also endured condescending behavior from a teacher at school. Leon’s parents tried to shield him from the foreboding world developments, and some members of their community were still optimistic enough to believe that the Nazis would eventually abandon their current actions. However, Leon was smart enough to sense the danger suggested by the growing antisemitic restrictions in Germany. To hint at the coming troubles, Leyson includes such ominous details as the disappearance of a family of neighbors who migrated out of the city, never to be heard from again.
Leyson concludes the chapter with the grim statement that the German invasion marked the beginning of his family’s “years of hell” (49), thus providing a strong link to the chapters that follow and foreshadowing the various ways in which he and others would engage in Passive Resistance in the Face of Oppression. The first two chapters of The Boy on the Wooden Box therefore provide necessary exposition and insight into Leon’s family structure and wider concerns, setting the stage for the main body of the book, which focuses on Leyson’s experiences in the war and the Holocaust.
