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

