Free The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson

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 sortof 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