The Jewish boy that Peter Szubanski’s family took in during World War II symbolizes the unique suffering and moral uncertainty that war creates. During World War II in Poland, when the penalty for sheltering Jews was death, Peter’s family took in a young Jewish boy and his mother. While staying with the Szubanskis, the Jewish boy would cry in Yiddish, causing a disruption that put the Szubanski family in danger of capture and execution. Whenever Peter mentions the Jewish boy and the danger in which the boy’s crying could have put the family, his tone is disdainful, leading Magda to wonder whether Peter had, in his fear, developed anti-Semitic thinking. Thus, for Magda, the Jewish boy comes to represent how the war caused Peter to compromise his personal morals, instilling in him prejudices that would have repulsed him under normal circumstances.
The Jewish boy also symbolizes the danger of emotions during wartime. As Magda investigates her ancestors’ lives during the war, she learns that, under the pressure of their own and their neighbors’ fears, the Szubanskis eventually sent the Jewish boy and his mother away. Danuta and Jadwiga were both particularly fond of the Jewish boy, and they knew that he and his mother, who both had distinctive Jewish features, would likely be captured and killed after the Szubanski family turned them away. Yet their obligation to protect their own family forced them to set aside their emotions and betray people they cared about. In this way, the boy represents how the war forced families to make impossible choices, setting aside their emotions in order to survive.
The Jewish Boy Quotes in Reckoning
I had never seen a photograph of a real dead body. A murdered body. Lying face down was something that looked like an old bundle of torn clothing. But there seemed to be a hand attached to it. And another hand, unconnected, a few inches away. What appeared to be a head was lying face down and had a hole the size of a fifty-cent piece in the back of it. But it was the body I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t there.
It was not just Germans who hated the Jews—it was Poles as well. Betraying them, selling them, profiteering and collaborating in their destruction.
[…]
It was as if someone had plunged a red-hot iron into my sympathetic nervous system. Pain shot through my whole body. I lay on my bed trembling. The Poles were not just the good people. We were also the bad people. We had not helped the Jews. Had my father hurt the Jews?
He was reproaching her—for what? Her weakness?—and he was recasting her response as self-indulgent. A useless thing that was no help to anyone.
As a man his job was not to feel. It was to act, to do something. Maybe Izabella’s father was right—feelings are what get people killed.
But dear God, if you cannot weep at Auschwitz?
I was thirty-one years old. I was a brave Pole. I felt the expectation to man up, and my emotions fell into step with my father’s. They floated off like vapor. I felt, at that moment, nothing except irritation with my mother’s weakness.
[Peter] squints into the distance as though he might find…what? Answers? Justice? Wisdom?
‘How would I react?’ he asks straight at the camera. ‘You see you don’t know your reaction until you are actually there, until you are confronted with the circumstances. There were people swearing what they wouldn’t do. And when it came to the crunch…they bloody well did it.’
The Jewish Boy Symbol Timeline in Reckoning
