The Boy On The Wooden Box

Faced with a level of prejudice and hostility that dehumanizes them, Leon and his family were forced to endure the increasing violence of their world after the Germans invaded and occupied Poland. However, although they recognized the relative helplessness of their situation, they nonetheless found small ways to resist the Nazis’ oppression. In Leyson’s words, “We fought the depravity of the Nazis with subtle forms of resistance” (83). 

This dynamic is clear even in the earlier moments of the war, when Leon and his siblings were forced to gain a great deal of maturity and make decisions that even adults would be hard-pressed to face. They banded together to locate their imprisoned father and bring him food, and later, when they were trapped within the harsh world of the ghetto, they risked their own lives and safety to carry a sick woman to the clinic in defiance of the curfew. While being forced out of the ghetto, Leon’s mother deliberately broke their furniture, and Leyson comments, “It felt so good to do something against the Germans, even if the only thing we could do was destroy our own possessions” (107). These and other actions indicate that despite the injustice that he and his family had to survive, they found ways to assert their autonomy, even if only to themselves.