ARTS&LIFE
BOOK REVIEW
A
nyone who has read
about or has listened
to a survivor speak
about the Holocaust realizes
they possessed essential per-
sonal attributes.
They were bless-
ed with physical
and mental
toughness; they
also had to have
some luck.
Famous
Jewish-Italian
survivor Primo
Levi, who wrote one of the
early and best-known firsthand
accounts of life in Auschwitz,
If This Were a Man (English
version, Survival in Auschwitz),
believed that good fortune
was the deciding factor as
to whether one survived the
Holocaust or not. A recent
work, however, demonstrates
that it also helped to have
quick wits, in-demand skills
and brotherly solidarity.
The Watchmakers by Harry
and Scott Lenga is a father-son
collaboration. The primary
writer, Scott Lenga, is the son
of survivor and watchmak-
er, Harry Lenga. Scott has a
degree in economics from
Berkeley and a law degree from
UCLA and now lives in Israel.
He grew up hearing firsthand,
detailed accounts from his
father about his life before and
during the Holocaust.
Scott decided that his father’s
personal history should be
documented. To this end, Scott
conducted 37 hours of inter-
views with Harry and, from
these oral histories, construct-
ed an informative and moving
first-person narrative. It is a
history of a poor Jewish family
living in Poland prior to World
War II and a saga of survival
during the Holocaust.
The story begins with
Harry’s birth as Yekhiel Ben
Tzion, or “Khil” for short, into
a poor Yiddish-speaking family
of Chassidic Jews in Kozhnitz,
Poland, in 1919. His father,
Mikhoel, was a watchmaker
from Warsaw. His mother,
Malke (nee Reyle Wildenberg),
was from a prominent religious
family in Kozhnitz.
Tragically, she died in child-
birth when Khil was 4 years old,
leaving behind her husband,
Khil, two older brothers and
a sister — Mailekh, Yitzkhak
and Khalale — and a younger
brother, Moishele. This trau-
matic experience haunted the
family forever.
Khil’s father struggled to
sustain his family, and this is
a story of everyday survival as
poor Jews in Poland, which
was home to Europe’s largest
pre-war population of Jews,
along with plenty of antise-
mitic Poles. Mikhoel, however,
provided his sons with a most
precious gift: skill in watch-
making.
The bulk of the book follows
Khil and two brothers, Mailekh
and Moishele, in ghettos, work
camps and death camps after
the Nazi invasion. The brothers
experienced them
all but resolved to
stay together no
matter the conse-
quences. The narra-
tive is a finely detailed account
of Khil’s escape from the
Warsaw and Kozhnitz Ghettos,
reuniting with his family,
and the lives that he and his
brothers then led as they were
moved through various camps,
including Auschwitz, to their
final liberation from Ebensee
in Austria in 1945.
HOW THEY SURVIVED
Watchmaking was key to the
brothers’ survival. Nazi officers
and guards needed repairs for
their timepieces, and watch-
makers were hard to find
during the war. The brothers
could make repairs and there-
by gain extra bits of food or
better working conditions. In
addition, spare watches care-
fully hidden in bars of soaps
were crucial gifts for critical
moments in concentration
camps when the brothers faced
separation or worse fates.
Khil and his two brothers
survived together. After lib-
eration and some time in DP
camps, they discovered that
Yitzkhak was also alive. Sadly,
the rest of the family was not.
In 1949, Khil immigrated to
St. Louis and, for 30 years, was
Harry the Watchmaker.
This is a well-written, finely
crafted book. The oral his-
tory of Harry Lenga is first-
rate and provides a superb
structure for the narrative.
Moreover, as demonstrated by
his bibliography and endnotes,
Scott’s research goes well
beyond interviews with his
father. Scott also addresses his
translation of Harry’s Yiddish-
English in the narrative and
provides the reader with a
useful glossary of Yiddish/
Hebrew/German terms that
appear in the text.
Lenga points out that his
father did not have a definitive
answer to the question that all
survivors grapple with: Why
did I live while so many died?
The strength of this book
is that Harry provides great
insight into the decisions he
and his brothers; decisions
that, along with some good
luck and personal toughness,
allowed all three to survive the
Holocaust and to thrive in the
aftermath of World War II.
As Israeli American histo-
rian Michael Oren has noted,
“Every story of survival is
extraordinary.” Scott Lenga’s
telling of Harry’s story is one
of the best renditions of an
extraordinary tale that one can
find preserved on paper. It is
a compelling book that leaves
the reader in awe of the jour-
ney of Harry and his brothers,
The Watchmakers.
The Watchmakers: A Story of Brotherhood, Survival,
and Hope Amid the Holocaust, Harry & Scott Lenga
(Kensington Publishing Corp.: New York), 2022.
A True Story
of Survival
56 | AUGUST 18 • 2022
Mike Smith
Alene and
Graham Landau
Archivist Chair