Leon Leyson, one of youngest of the Jews saved by Oskar Schindler from the Holocuast, completed a memoir just before he died in January, and the book will be released in August, his publisher said on Monday.
Atheneum, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, said the book offers a boy’s perspective on the heroic Schindler. Mr. Leyson was 10 years old when the Germans invaded Poland and his family was forcibly relocated to the Jewish ghetto in Krakow. Eventually he was assigned work in one of Schindler’s ceramics factories.
He was so skinny and small that he had to stand on a box to reach his machines, the inspiration for the book’s title, “The Boy on the Wooden Box.†Schindler took special care of the boy, calling him “little Leyson.†He often provided him with extra rations of food and took an extraordinary risk in rescuing his mother and sister from Auschwitz, the concentration camp to which they had been sent accidentally.
All of his family but two brother survived the war under Schindler’s care. Mr. Leyson ended up in Los Angeles where he worked as high school teacher for 39 years.
During most of his lifetime, Mr. Leyson preferred not to live in the shadow of his past and preferred not to talk about his Holocaust experiences. That changed, however, with the release of the Steven Speilberg film Schindler’s List in 1993. After that, he frequently spoke at schools and to authors interested in the subject.
Atheneum said that Mr. Leyson passed away the day after they received the manuscript. The book was co-written by Marilyn J. Harran, who holds the Stern Chair in Holocaust Education at Chapman University.
