The Watchmakers, A Timely release

     

    I was fortunate enough to have been offered an Advance Reader's Edition of The Watchmakers: A Story of Brotherhood, Survival, and Hope Amid the Holocaust, which is set to be released June 28, 2022.  The Watchmakers was written by Scott Lenga, based on nearly 40 hours of interviews with his father, Harry, recorded in the 1990s. Scott then transcribed the interviews and created a first person account, in Harry's words and voice.

    Harry Lenga was born Yekhiel Ben Tzion Lenga in 1919, in a majority Jewish village about 50 miles southeast of Warsaw. The Jewish villagers called it Kozhnitz, and it was a special village for a particular sect of Chassidic (or Hasidic Jews). and Harry's father Mikhoel counted prominent ancestors in both of his parents' families. The book paints a vivid picture of life in the small village as he and his siblings grew up and attended school. Eventually, if somewhat reluctantly, Harry follows the path of his father and his two brothers, Mailekh and Moishe, and learns to be a watchmaker.

    Little did he know how serendipitous that decision would prove to be.  He and his brothers decided to move to Warsaw for greater opportunities, and they were there when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. They managed to survive the Warsaw Ghetto experience, escaping in 1941 and returning to Kozhnitz, only to find their family in a ghetto there. There was no safety there, however, as the German murder squads, the Einzatsgruppen began liquidating Jews, Gypsies, and other undesirables, rounding them up and marching them out of the village to be shot into mass graves. The brothers escaped into the forests with little beyond the clothes on their backs and their watchmaking tools and watch parts. After being captured, they spent 1942 to 1945 being transported to a number of concentration and death camps: Wolanow, Starachowice, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Melk, and Ebensee.  There, they survived against all odds, in an extraordinary manner.

    At Wolonow, Harry realized that he and his brothers had value to their captors. He dared to offer deals to their captors, watch repair in exchange for easier work assignments and greater privileges. Surprisingly, it worked. In every camp, they were given watches to repair, and they survived. (Who knew every soldier in WWII, it seems, had at least one watch in need of repair?  Today, 75 years later, watches are disappearing, but for Harry and his brothers, watches actually meant survival.)  In every camp, the brothers survived and, importantly, stayed together until May 6, 1945 when the camp at Ebensee was liberated by American troops. ( One of the nice appendices of the book is the testimony of Robert Persinger, the first U.S. Army tank commander to enter the camp.) 

    After liberation, Harry immigrated to St. Louis Missouri and ran a jewelry shop there with his wife for thirty years before moving to Israel.

    The book is a welcome addition to the history of the Holocaust or Shoah, and it includes helpful photos, maps and appendices for the reader. I highly recommend it.