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.
Prologue-Chapter 1
Prologue Summary
Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain descriptions of wartime violence, antisemitism, genocide, abuse, and murder in the context of the Holocaust.
The Prologue is set in the fall of 1965, when Leyson is attending a reunion of “Schindler Jews” in Los Angeles. Leyson is now 35 years old, married, and working as a teacher. He is worried that Oskar Schindler will not recognize him due to the 20 years that have passed since they last met and the fact that he was then a starving 15-year-old. To his great surprise, Schindler recognizes him immediately. Leyson reflects on Schindler’s brave efforts to save the lives of over a thousand Jews during the Holocaust.
Chapter 1 Summary
Leon describes his idyllic rural childhood in Narewka, northeastern Poland, in the 1930s, where “life seemed an endless, carefree journey” (7). The town is old-fashioned, with unpaved roads, no electricity or indoor plumbing, and horse and wagon as the main form of transportation.
Leon is the youngest of five children; he has three brothers, Tsalig, David, and Hershel, and a sister, Pesza, who is his father’s favorite. Leon idolizes his brother Tsalig, who is a mechanical wizard, but his brother David is his “closest companion” (16).
Leon’s parents are honest, hardworking country folk. His mother, Chanah, grew up as the “ugly duckling” of her family, ignored in favor of her more attractive sister, Shaina. Leon’s father, Moshe, started out as a blacksmith but has taken up work in a glass factory to earn a better living for his family. Eventually, the owner of the factory expands the business by moving it 350 miles away to the Polish capital, Kraków. Along with oldest son Herschel, Moshe moves to Kraków with the intention of bringing the rest of the family there when he has earned enough money. Moshe occasionally returns home to visit with gifts for the children.
The Jewish sabbath, seder, and synagogue services make a strong impression on Leon growing up. The Jews and Christians of Narewka live in harmony for the most part, the exception being during the Christian Holy Week, when antisemitic attitudes come to the fore among the children. In school, too, Leon endures occasional slights against Jews from the teachers.
Unlike Leon, his parents remember times in the recent past when Jews were persecuted. Both lived through World War I, when the Germans occupied Poland but treated the Poles with basic respect, although Moshe was conscripted for forced labor on a railroad. They believe, mistakenly, that the Germans will not give them any more trouble.
Prologue-Chapter 1 Analysis
Leyson frames his book by recalling events that took place before and after the main narrative. In the Prologue, he recounts his meeting with Oskar Schindler at a reunion in 1965. This approach effectively puts Schindler at the center of the story and indicates that Leyson survives the war and eventually becomes a successful teacher and family man in America.
Then, in Chapter 1, Leyson depicts the environment in which he grew up in Poland before the war upended his life. This crucial section demonstrates Leyson’s habit of Drawing Strength from Family Loyalty and togetherness. His depictions also set the stage and provide context for his later war experiences. Leon’s childhood was blissful and idyllic, and as he describes his summertime dives into the river with his friends, this image of innocence contrasts sharply with the catastrophic events that occur later in the book.
Leyson also provides a pragmatic sketch of the social and political realities of the time, explaining that relations between Jews and Christians in Narewka were mostly friendly but that there were foreboding exceptions. More ominous indicators include the hostility and violence that Christian children directed against Jewish children during Holy Week, as well as teachers’ derogatory comments toward Jewish children. With these details, Leyson suggests that widespread prejudice can grow from small, individual actions of hatred. Leyson depicts Narewka as an insular community that was cut off from changes in the larger world, and this picture forms a stark contrast with the chaos that Leon and his family will experience at the start of the war.
Although Leyson has affection and respect for the traditional way of life he grew up with, he also implies that the conservative mindset of his elders prevented them from fully acknowledging the threats taking shape around them. The elders assumed that life would proceed rationally and that their past experiences were a reliable guide to what would happen in the future. They failed to grasp the danger that faced them in the form of growing violence and antisemitism.
