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The Boy on the Wooden Box: Chapters 4–6

In this memoir, Leyson details how he and his family survived the Holocaust with the help of Oskar Schindler.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Prologue–Chapter 1, Chapters 2–3, Chapters 4–6, Chapters 7–8, Chapter 9–Epilogue
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Full list of words from this list:

  1. exploit
    use or manipulate to one's advantage
    As a clever businessman, Schindler seized the opportunity and began producing enamelware pots and pans for the Germans, a line of production guaranteed to generate a large ongoing profit, especially since his labor costs were minimal. He could exploit Polish workers at low wages and Jews for none at all.
  2. prowess
    a superior skill learned by study and practice
    His safecracking prowess had earned him Schindler's respect.
  3. harangue
    a loud bombastic declamation expressed with strong emotion
    Over the next months, tens of thousands of frightened Jews departed for the outlying towns and villages from which many of them had so recently fled. Most went voluntarily, glad to be able to take a few of their possessions with them and relieved to escape the constant harangues and threats of the Nazis.
  4. relentless
    never-ceasing
    They told us the departing Jews were going to better lives away from the city, where they would be in less crowded conditions and not have to endure the relentless harassment from German soldiers patrolling the streets.
  5. ingenious
    showing inventiveness and skill
    My father, ever ingenious, found a way to trade our apartment for one a gentile friend had inside the ghetto, hoping the swap might provide better accommodations than any the Nazis would arrange.
  6. sadistic
    deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on another
    I looked up at the high walls and saw that, with their flair for the sadistic, the Nazis, in the last few days, had topped the walls with rounded stones that resembled headstones on graves.
  7. implicit
    suggested though not directly expressed
    Their implicit message was that we were moving into what would become our own cemetery.
  8. rampant
    occurring or increasing in an unrestrained way
    The crowding, poor nutrition, and lack of hygiene made disease rampant; from typhus to scarlet fever, from malnutrition to psychosis, illness of some kind struck nearly every family.
  9. dogma
    a doctrine or code of beliefs accepted as authoritative
    But Nazi dogma grouped Jews as one, as the loathed enemy of the Aryans.
  10. depravity
    moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles
    Retaining our humanity, cherishing our heritage, we fought the depravity of the Nazis with subtle forms of resistance.
  11. subside
    wear off or die down
    Even with a special treat like that, my raging appetite didn't subside.
  12. furtively
    in a secretive manner
    Escapees from earlier deportations had furtively returned to the ghetto with stories of trains filled with people entering a camp and leaving empty, even though the population of the camp never increased.
  13. futility
    uselessness as a consequence of having no practical result
    There was an overpowering sense of futility.
  14. reverberate
    ring or echo with sound
    In the morning the ghetto reverberated with sounds of the Aktion, the roundup: gunshots, shouts in German, doors banging, and heavy boots on the stairs.
  15. limbo
    a period of prolonged uncertainty
    They had managed to survive on their own without their parents, but now we were all caught in limbo.
Created on Tue Oct 15 19:23:18 EDT 2019 (updated Wed Jun 25 22:12:43 EDT 2025)

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