Leon Leyson (born Leib Lejzon; September 15, 1929 – January 12, 2013) was a Polish-American Holocaust survivor and one of the youngest Schindlerjuden, Jews saved by Oskar Schindler.
[1] His posthumously published memoir, The Boy on the Wooden Box- How the impossible became the possible, on Schindler's List details his extraordinary survival during the dark times of the dreaded Holocaust.
In 1941, he and the rest of the town's Jews, including most of the Leyson's extended family members, were massacred by the Nazis when they invaded.
Lejzon's father, Moshe, and his brother David began working for Oskar Schindler at his enamelware factory soon after.
[11] Channah, Leib and Pesza were covered under Moshe's pass until they found work, sparing them from deportation to an extermination camp.
Tsalig Lejzon was unable to get an employment pass, and was put on a train for deportation, most likely to the Bełżec extermination camp.
[14] Moshe managed to get Leib and Channah transferred out of Płaszów to Schindler's factory, where they remained in relative safety for almost a year.
[16] The female Schindlerjuden, including Channah and Pesza, were sent to Auschwitz–Birkenau where they spent a harrowing few weeks before Schindler bribed Nazi officials into releasing them to Brünnlitz.
[18] After the Red Army liberated Brünnlitz, the Lejzons briefly returned to Kraków, before Leib and his parents left for a displaced persons camp in Wetzlar, American-occupied Germany.
In 1949, Lejzon and his parents immigrated to the United States, where they changed their family name to Leyson and Leib adopted the name Leon.
[11][19] In 1951, Leyson was drafted and served as an engineer in the US Army in Okinawa, Japan for sixteen months during the Korean War.
[28][29] The title came from Leyson, at age 13, needing to stand on a wooden box to reach the machinery in the factory at Brünnlitz.