Praise for The Watchmakers
“A truly extraordinary book—one full of compassion, love, and hope in the midst of unimaginable suffering and despair—The Watchmakers is a humbling account, one that is both jaw-droppingly well-written and uplifting at the same time. It reads like a thriller, and revived my faith in the enduring quality and beauty of the human spirit, even when mired in the depths of darkness and crazed evil. Once I had finished the last page I only wanted to start reading it all over again. Unputdownable, despite the cruelty, brutality, barbarism, and sheer downright hatred visited upon the brothers at the heart of this epic tale. I will return to The Watchmakers again and again.”
—Damien Lewis, #1 international bestselling author
“Inspiring. Exhilarating. Astonishing. An epic tale of brotherhood, ingenuity, and survival, told with the ticking precision of a wind-up watch. The Watchmakers reminds us of the importance of loyalty, how to persevere against aggression, and how well-timed and precisely measured audacity can ignite a hidden spark of humanity in the darkest of times.”
—Heather Dune Macadam, international bestselling author of 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz and Star Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler’s Paris
“The Watchmakers is an astonishing testament to courage, guile, and brotherly devotion under impossible circumstances. Gripping as a thriller, deeply moving, it brings fresh urgency to a vitally important piece of history. Everyone should read it.”
—Jesse Kellerman, bestselling author
“The Watchmakers is a hybrid first- and second-generation Holocaust survivor memoir. Based on more than forty hours of his father’s recorded oral testimonies and using his father’s own words, Scott Lenga has crafted a vivid and compelling account of survival through family solidarity and bartered watchmaker skills. The journey of Harry Lenga and his two brothers from the Kozhnitz ghetto through various slave labor camps and finally Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen, Melk, and Ebensee is a story of resilience, adaptability, ingenuity, endurance, and perseverance.”
—Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of Ordinary Men and Remembering Survival
“Every story of Holocaust survival is extraordinary and few more so than Harry Lenga’s. Captured by his son, Scott, this is a saga of fortitude, resilience, brotherly love, and faith. It should be read by anyone—students, teachers, historians—who cares about preserving the memory of those who, like Harry Lenga and his brothers, found a way of remaining alive—and remaining human—in the face of evil.”
—Dr. Michael Oren, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, and member of Knesset
“The Watchmakers is an extraordinary book—gripping, inspiring, and terrifying all at once. Each Holocaust survivor is a walking miracle. Many of them volunteered to testify to their lives in hell, but most did not manage to do so in time. We feel the loss of precious untold stories from the generation of survivors whose hard-earned physical existence will soon pass from this world. It is in that context that we honor this renewed literary genre of Holocaust testimony furthered by Scott Lenga, son of Harry Lenga. Harry speaks to us in his own voice captured from more than forty hours of interviews, notwithstanding the twenty-two years since his natural death. Here, Scott Lenga offers an empowering model for future generations of survivor descendants and delivers a harrowing saga of timeless values put to the test.”
—Blu Greenberg, author of On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition and How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household, and founder of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
“A fascinating read. The horror of Nazi Germany will always haunt us, but like most traumas there is a temptation to file the era away and pay scant attention to the experience. The Watchmakers cuts through that and lays bare the utter inhumanity of what happened in appalling detail. Its focus on the day-to-day—indeed the moment-to-moment—struggle to survive strikes home vividly. Only occasionally does Harry Lenga stop to think about the wider implications, and I think that makes his experiences come across with an immediacy that is sometimes missing from other accounts. I really came to appreciate the life and death significance of something as simple as a pair of shoes, a battered metal soup bowl, or a shave. I found myself shocked, once again, by the mindless brutality and casual cruelty of the Nazi regime and its henchmen. As Harry notes, it could happen anywhere. The Watchmakers serves as a fresh warning of the dangers of ignoring history.”
—Simon Scarrow, Sunday Times bestselling author of Blackout and the Eagles of the Empire series
“World War II and the Holocaust still have lessons to teach us, and stories yet to be told. The Watchmakers presents a unique survival story that will take its place in Holocaust literature alongside works by greats such as Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi.”
—Tom Young, author of Silver Wings, Iron Cross and Red Burning Sky
“The Watchmakers is a beautiful tribute to the bond of brotherhood. Against all odds, Harry Lenga and his brothers managed to endure multiple concentration camps, ghettos, and a death march during the Holocaust. Their survival was largely based on making decisions as a team of brothers, their watchmaking abilities, and luck. Harry’s son, Scott Lenga, does a wonderful job of incorporating his father’s own words throughout the story. Additionally, the strong relationship between the brothers is undeniable as the author writes, ‘The togetherness—the will to live—was so strong.’ Even though the book documents the worst of mankind, I found their story compelling, as it manages to highlight the beautiful bond between brothers and the hope for a better tomorrow.”
—Adena Bernstein Astrowsky, author of Living among the Dead: My Grandmother’s Holocaust Survival Story of Love and Strength
“The Watchmakers is an intimate, powerful, and eloquent memoir. As told by Harry Lenga, the story is drenched in pain, brutality, and sadness, but with hardly a drop of hopelessness or despair. The focus required for precision watchmaking became a shield of resistance for Harry and his brothers in the Nazi slave labor and death camps. This craft learned from their father sustained their spirits, lifting them above the soul-crushing world of their captivity. Moreover, The Watchmakers teaches a lesson: when confronting a murderous evil, your biggest challenge is holding on to your own human decency.”
—Michael Clerizo, author of Masters of Contemporary Watchmaking and George Daniels: A Master Watchmaker and His Art
“Scott Lenga’s significant accomplishment was to capture his father’s voice and portray his experience from early childhood as a young Chassidic boy into the gates of Auschwitz and beyond, from the death marches to life in postwar Germany and his resettlement in St. Louis. Survivors often mistakenly say that the reason they survived was luck—they all knew someone smarter and wiser, braver and stronger, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and did not make it through. Harry Lenga survived not merely by luck, but with his skill as a watchmaker, his audacity, and his ingenuity as he faced all but certain death time and again. He survived with his brothers because they too had skills, and they forged an iron bond to pull each other through. The work is compelling, the writing is riveting, and one comes away with deep gratitude to both father and son—father for telling the story to his son, and son for faithfully transmitting a story that must be told.”
—Michael Berenbaum, Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of Sigi Ziering Institute, American Jewish University, Los Angeles
“I worked closely with Harry Lenga when I directed the Holocaust Museum and Education Center in St. Louis. He very often gave personal testimony about his Holocaust experiences to students in middle schools, high schools, and universities, and his articulate manner mesmerized his audiences. Harry’s story comprises the entire gamut of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis against Jews in Europe, and his story is replete with multiple examples of spiritual resistance as well as incredible bravery, moral and ethical courage, and altruistic behavior. The Watchmakers is a magnificent testimony to the strength that lies within the human spirit in the face of extreme adversity. This book should have a central place in every course that is taught on the Holocaust.”
—Rabbi Robert Sternberg, founding director of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and co-author of Jewish-Christian Relations in Light of the Holocaust
“The Watchmakers is not only a powerful Holocaust survival story but an epic tale of courage, endurance, and grit on the scale of those heroic sagas dating back to The Odyssey. Indeed, Homer’s description of Odysseus—strong, courageous, and ingenious—also describes Harry Lenga as he and his two brothers undertake a journey to freedom every bit as harrowing and brutal as the one taken by Odysseus. Just as Odysseus survived a series of increasingly dangerous monsters on his long voyage home, so, too, did this brave band of brothers survive the soul-crushing slave labor camps, the brutal Nazi taskmasters, and various death camps on their long voyage to liberation.”
—Michael A. Kahn, trial lawyer and award-winning author of Bad Trust
“The Watchmakers is a vivid reminder of a Jewish world erased, miracles of survival, and lives of resilience—all characteristics of an extraordinary generation we are in danger of forgetting all too quickly.”
—Daniel Gordis, Koret Distinguished Fellow, Shalem College, Jerusalem, and author of Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
“Scott Lenga provides us with the personal story of his father and two uncles, who against all odds managed to survive six long years of war, deprivation, hunger, disease, and loss of their family members during the Holocaust. As an educator, I found this amazing story of resilience, chutzpah, and endurance to be a powerful message to every student in every classroom. There are numerous memoirs that have been published over the years; this one, written in the first person by Scott, is both powerful and engrossing and takes the reader through the most horrific events of the Holocaust without traumatizing the reader. Above all, it leaves us with hope—always the hope—that one needed in order to survive. Harry’s ability to leverage his skills as a watchmaker is an inspiration. I highly recommend this memoir to any teacher who wants to provide his or her students with a firsthand account of the events of the Holocaust through this amazing story of the Lenga brothers.”
—Ephraim Kaye, former Director for International Seminars for Educators at the International School for Holocaust Studies of Yad Vashem
