The Boy on the Wooden Box
How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List
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4.7 • 236 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“Much like The Boy In the Striped Pajamas or The Book Thief,” this remarkable memoir from Leon Leyson, one of the youngest children to survive the Holocaust on Oskar Schindler’s list, “brings to readers a story of bravery and the fight for a chance to live” (VOYA).
This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler’s list child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) was only ten years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the Krakow ghetto. With incredible luck, perseverance, and grit, Leyson was able to survive the sadism of the Nazis, including that of the demonic Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow, the concentration camp outside Krakow.
Ultimately, it was the generosity and cunning of one man, Oskar Schindler, who saved Leon Leyson’s life, and the lives of his mother, his father, and two of his four siblings, by adding their names to his list of workers in his factory—a list that became world renowned: Schindler’s list.
Told with an abundance of dignity and a remarkable lack of rancor and venom, The Boy on the Wooden Box is a legacy of hope, a memoir unlike anything you’ve ever read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Leyson, who died in January at age 83, was No. 289 on Schindler's list and its youngest member. He was just 13 when Leyson's father convinced Oskar Schindler to let "Little Leyson" (as Schindler knew him) and other family members find refuge in the Emalia factory; Leyson was so small he had to stand on a box to work the machinery. Leyson and his coauthors give this wrenching memoir some literary styling, but the book is at its most powerful when Leyson relays the events in a straightforward manner, as if in a deposition, from the shock of seeing his once-proud father shamed by anti-Semitism to the deprivation that defined his youth. Schindler remains a kindly but enigmatic figure in Leyson's retelling, occasionally doting but usually distant. Leyson makes it clear that being "Schindler Jews" offered a thread of hope, but it never shielded them from the chaos and evil that surrounded them. Readers will close the book feeling that they have made a genuinely personal connection to this remarkable man. Ages 9 14.
Customer Reviews
I love it
I was reading this book just for fun until I got to about page 168 about that time I started writing it down so i could read it anywhere if only I could of learned what happened from Hershel And Tsaligs
A very touching story
I read this story with my mom, and needless to say, this changed my life and perspective.
A heart touching tragedy
This book both gave me a better view on the suffrage of the Jews of the Holocaust, and touched my heart to know what they went through without giving up. If people could hold as much kindness and as much courage as this man did after his horrific youth today, the world would be changed forever. Words cannot express the amount of respect and the special place in my heart that this story will have with me for the rest of my life. This book was worth every minute. Thank you for this.