Survival Watch: Book Review of The Watchmakers

 

The Watchmakers: A Story of Brotherhood, Survival, and Hope Amid the Holocaust by Harry Lenga
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Kensington Publishing Corp. and GoodReads Giveaways for the review copy of Harry Lenga’s and Scott Lenga’s The Watchmakers, which I received in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The three Lenga brothers must make a terrible choice. All of the Jews of Kozhnitz, Poland, have been forced into the ghetto and now there is a rumor that they will all be removed. No one knows exactly what is about to happen, but there is a possibility that the brothers can escape into a labor camp. If they go, they will leave behind their father, who will not leave without their stepmother, who will not leave behind her elderly and sickly mother. They decide to take the risk, and equipped with all of their father’s watchmaking tools--everything they can carry, and then some--and a warm comforter, they escape to the labor camp. Now we know that to stay would have been certain death, but then there was still hope, coupled with the refusal to believe that human beings could be such monsters as to destroy innocent lives without any provocation. Now we know that the risk of escaping the ghetto was well worth it. Now we know that is the only way that the Lenga brothers could have survived.

And survive, they did. The Watchmakers is the amazing story of how they survived, through serendipity, the willingness to take calculated risks, and the skills and tools for watchmaking that they were freely given by their father.

The Watchmakers is told from the point of view of Yekhiel (Harry Lenga’s birth name) from recorded interviews. It is edited and written by his son Scott Lenga, who made the choice to retain the oral telling of the story by leaving it in his father’s voice and keeping his words and turns of phrase. Indeed, it sounds very much like a Polish survivor of the Holocaust, especially with the mix of Hebrew and Yiddish with the English.

The brothers were not able to remain in the work camp for long, as all the Jews were transported to worse circumstances. Colder, more difficult, and more dangerous work. The authorities became more vicious, more vindictive, and more willing to waste a life. Yekhiel is the brother who is willing to take a chance, willing to approach the person a rank above them to offer to fix a watch, in exchange for more food or just to escape the harsh physical labor that everyone was subjected to. And it was a risk--as their captors made no effort to preserve their lives, and some enjoyed causing pain and humiliation. Approaching an authority could result in a rifle butt to the head or worse.

Reading books about the Holocaust brings me mixed emotions. The horror of human actions is too large for me to fully comprehend, as my imagination only goes so far. I want to believe that humans cannot act so monstrously, and I find it horrifying that they can be so evil. It is not pleasurable and should not be pleasurable to read about all of the brutal things that people did, though it is important that we do not forget and that we continue to tell the stories of the ones who were lost and the ones who survived. We cannot deny or dislike the reality so much as to ignore it. The survivors struggled to live even after they were rescued, as they felt grief for those who did not survive, PTSD from the horrors they experienced, and survivor’s guilt that they should make it out and so many did not. There were many difficulties in readjusting to life after the Holocaust, bodily as well as mentally and emotionally. Many passed along generational trauma, including a general distrust of non-Jews. To this day, there are communities in America who intentionally isolate themselves from non-Jews because they fear antisemitism and they fear that even those who seem to be good neighbors would viciously turn on them, as often happened during the Holocaust--people who had been counted as good friends turned them in out of fear or for a reward. After the war, survivors were killed when they tried to reclaim possessions and property from before the war.

In light of this, making Holocaust literature a commodity feels extremely problematic, but I do not have an answer for that at the moment. I can say that Harry Lenga’s account of his experiences are clear and compelling with suspense and excitement. You want him and his brothers to survive at the same time that so many forces are against their survival.

Would I teach this book? The Watchmakers would be a great book club pick. There is a lot in the plot to discuss and much to talk about in terms of the brothers’ love and support for each other. Indeed, it seems better suited for book club than teaching, at least for my current courses. The focus on history makes the book interesting, but does not suit my purposes for literature. Currently, I teach Man’s Search for Meaning, which does not go as deeply into Viktor Frankl’s experience during the Holocaust and is certainly not so step-by-step as Lenga describes. Though Man’s Search for Meaning does not give as much of Victor Frankl’s story as The Watchmakers does for Harry Lenga, it does have a second half that gives Frankl’s philosophy of logotherapy, and it also discusses the propensity for both goodness and evil in humanity as well as needing a purpose in life, or something that you live for and keeps you living. It gives us the opportunity to discuss the Holocaust, what happened, the impact it had, a personal experience, as well as opening the door to some philosophical discussion as well. The format of Man’s Search for Meaning and the need to include both halves brings with it a good class discussion. The Watchmakers is mostly story and experience, and it is non-fiction. While I do teach some nonfiction, I focus more on fiction and poetry. The literary elements of the story are not as strong. I can see perhaps using it to discuss primary research, first person accounts, or even how to tell someone else’s story. Okay, I have talked myself into it, I think that it could be useful under certain circumstances, especially to open the door to discussions of taking someone else’s words of their stories or turning a series of interviews into someone else’s memoir. I think that it could be quite moving to tell someone else’s story.

Do I recommend this book? Yes, I think it is a good book to read and share with others.

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