Leon Leyson

About the Author

Leon Leyson was one of the youngest members of Oskar Schindler's list, a Polish-Jewish boy who survived the horrors of the Holocaust thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the German industrialist who saved over 1,200 Jews from Nazi death camps. Born in 1929 in Narewka, Poland, Leyson endured forced labor, starvation, and unimaginable loss before immigrating to the United States in 1949, where he built a life as a high school teacher in Huntington Park, California. It wasn't until decades later, inspired by Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List, that Leyson began sharing his story publicly. His memoir, The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List, offers a poignant, firsthand account of resilience, hope, and the human spirit's triumph over adversity, serving as a vital testament to the lessons of history.