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 9
Chapter 9 Summary
In October 1944, Leon spends some interim time at the fearsome Gross-Rosen concentration camp, 175 miles northwest of Kraków. The prisoners fear that they will be exterminated there, but instead, the males are shipped off to Brünnlitz, Sudetenland, where Schindler has relocated his factory. The females have been diverted to Auschwitz, but Schindler bribes the Nazis to have them sent to his factory instead. As they arrive, Leon sees his mother and Pesza and experiences “a rare moment of total joy” (157).
Leon and his family work at Schindler’s factory for the next eight months of the war. As the Germans lose the war, food becomes scarce, and Leon finds inventive ways of getting more to eat. From time to time, Schindler invites Leon up to his office, shares some friendly words, and gives him some bread, which Leon then shares with his father and brother. After some time, Schindler has Leon transferred to the day shift, which is less physically demanding; Leyson credits this change with saving his life. It is now early in 1945, and the rest of the workers are nearing a point of exhaustion.
In April 1945, the Soviet army is closing in on the Germans, who begin to flee. The Nazi officials are ordered to kill all the Jewish workers at the factory, but Schindler thwarts this plan by transferring the officials away. Schindler frees his Jewish employees, giving them bottles of vodka and blankets as gifts, and then flees. The prisoners stay at the factory, waiting to see what will happen. On May 8, a Soviet soldier arrives and tells the prisoners that they are free to go.
Chapter 9 Analysis
Leyson injects considerable suspense into this part of the narrative, withholding key details so that his account conveys the uncertainty that he and the other prisoners felt about their potential fate at Gross-Rosen. Leyson heightens this mood of uncertainty and apprehension as he describes a moment when he and his companions were sent to take a shower and feared that they would be gassed. However, the shower turned out to be water, and they were shipped off to Schindler’s factory at the 11th hour and thereby saved. These events cement Schindler’s narrative role as savior and hero, as do the great lengths he later goes to in order to justify bringing the female prisoners to his factory instead of abandoning them to extermination at Auschwitz.
This chapter also works to create a more humanizing portrayal of Schindler, for although the young Leon was still somewhat fearful of the man, his time in Schindler’s office revealed the factory owner’s benign kindness toward his workers. When Schindler merely wanted to exchange some friendly words and give Leon some extra bread, the boy realized that he had nothing to fear from the factory owner. Even so, Leyson’s descriptions of his younger self’s wariness provide a nuanced portrayal of his interactions with Schindler. His wavering between trust and uncertainty reflects the sheer difficulty of discerning friends from enemies in this time of great strife and conflict.
When Schindler said goodbye to his employees, they gifted him with a ring bearing an inscription from the Talmud, which read, “He who saves a life saves the world entire” (164). The fact that Schindler’s employees created such a gift shows their intense gratitude to him for saving their lives. There is also considerable significance in giving a member of the Nazi Party a ring bearing a quote from the Talmud; this gift acknowledged that Schindler had proved himself to be a true ally to the Jewish people and therefore becomes symbolic of The Importance of Kindness in Dark Times.
While the end of the war was fast approaching by this point, the arrival of the Soviet army created a tense situation for Poland’s Jews, and Leyson crafts his narrative to indicate that the family was not yet certain of its safety. While the approach of the Soviet army signaled the imminent defeat of the Nazis, the Jewish people knew that this development could cause the Nazis to lash out even more strongly against Jews they had imprisoned. Thus, Leyson makes it clear that a broader political victory for the Allies did not necessarily guarantee that Jews still under German control would escape harm.
