Saved By An Angel

Leon Leyson (Leib Lejzon) was the youngest Jew on Schindler’s List. He, his father Moshe, mother Chana, brother David, and sister Pesza, were saved by working in the factory of Oskar Schindler.

On Monday night, Matt and I had the honour of seeing and hearing Leon Leyson speak about his experience and his “Angel”. Leyson was born in a small town in the north east of Poland, the youngest of five children. When Leon was seven, his father was transferred by his employer to a factory in Kracow. Almost two years later after establishing himself in his new job, Moshe sent for his wife and family to join him in the city. Leyson recalls with sweet joy the short, happy, carefree time he spent in the city before the Nazis invaded Poland. Recounting how he and his friends would jump on the streetcars when the conductor wasn’t looking and hoping off again as the conductor approached them to collect their fares. This story is told with a wry smile on his face and a glimmer in his eye as though he were telling of something that happened just yesterday.

In 1939 life for the Leyson’s changed in ways that were then, and remain so now, quite literally unbelievable. It started slowly and insidiously, first the directive that Jews were no longer allowed to sit on the benches in the parks. Leyson and his friends thought this was a pretty silly rule, after all who would police the park benches? A little while later Jews were forbidden to go to the parks. The street cars were roped off in the middle and Jews had to sit at the back of the car. Then the ropes were removed and the Jews were no longer allowed to use public transportation. By marginalizing the Jewish population, the Nazi’s had begun their systematic de-humanizing of European Jewry.

Next came the ghetto. Kracow’s three thousand Jews were herded into an area that had previously housed one thousand (non Jewish) residents. The non Jews were forced to move also. During this period Moshe lost his job and Oskar Schindler arrived in Kracow to take over a factory opposite the one Moshe had worked in. Leyson doesn’t go into much detail here, just saying that his father met Schindler and Schindler hired him to work in his factory. This meant that Moshe was given a permit to leave the ghetto every day to come and go from work. A few months later, Leyson brother David also went to work in Schindler’s factory. This is the first of many little things that kept the Leyson family alive. Moshe and David were able to smuggle food and coal into the ghetto. Leyson’s most vivid memory of the time in the ghetto is his hunger and fear.

Constant hunger and constant fear.

Just prior to the round up of Kracow’s Jews, Leyson’s oldest brother, 19 year old Hershel, escaped the city and managed to keep ahead of the Panzer divisions on the way back to live with his grandparents in his old home town. In 1941, Hershel and the rest of the town’s Jews were rounded up by the Nazis and taken to the forest at the edge of town. All the men were shot and buried in a mass grave.

A couple of days later the women and children, who had up until then been kept in a local barn, met the same fate. Leyson, trying hard not to be overcome with the emotion of this memory, states that his entire family in Poland (apart from the ones remaining in Kracow) were murdered in that forest. He makes a point that will re-occur during the rest of his presentation, that the Nazis didn’t murder numbers they murdered individuals; daughters, grandparents, mothers, brothers, husband, wives.

During the time that the Jews spent in the ghettos, the Germans were busy building death camps for the achievement of the final solution. The Jews in the Kracow ghetto were told that a transport train would shortly be leaving for the countryside where fresh air, uncramped conditions and jobs would be waiting for them. Understandably, many Jews signed up for the transport. Leyson leaves no doubt in his audiences mind that after that first transport everyone in Kracow knew the truth about the transports.

Jews who did not have outside jobs were forced to work in factories set up by the Nazis in the ghetto, Leyson worked in a brush factory. When construction of the death camp, Plaszow (which was situated close to the city of Kracow) was completed, the Nazis began the process of transferring the remaining ghetto residents to the camp. Residents were ordered to form groups in accordance with where they worked, Leyson joined the group of workers from the brush factory. A short time later a guard pulled him out of the group and told him to wait in another area. The same thing happened to a few of his friends. The boys decided to run away and hide in the roof of a building where they had hidden once before. Something told Leyson not to go with them. He was still just a kid and he wanted to go and say goodbye to his mother who was waiting with her designated group. Leyson ended up in Plaszow as did his mother and sister.

The other boys were found. And shot.

Schindler by this time had employed hundreds of Jews in his factory, it was time and labour consuming to transport the workers back and forth from the main camp so a sub camp was built to house the workers. His father and brother lived in the sub camp while he, his mother, and his sister, stayed in the main camp. While Leyson mentions several times that the events depicted in the film, Schindler’s List, are mostly accurate, the film does not come anywhere close to depicting the horror of being there. He does not go into detail and I imagine that life in the camp is probably too painful to re-live.

No one knows when or how Oskar Schindler came to the see the Jews as something other than cheap labour for his factory, but see it he did. The Jews who worked for him became “his” Jews and he went to extraordinary lengths to keep them safe. He risked his life and fortune (losing the latter) many times. Leyson states emphatically that if you put Schindler side by side with a Nazi, both of whom would be dressed in a similar fashion, and not having seen either one of them before, it would be quite easy to pick out Schindler. He would be the one that had something other than an inhumane deadness in his eyes.

When Schindler’s accountant, Itzhak Stern, was mistakenly put on a transport to the death camp, Belzec, Schindler went to the railroad station to find him. At the station, Schindler saw that Leyson’s 16 year old brother Tsalig was also destined for the death camp. Schindler told Tsalig that he could save him but Tsalig was with his girlfriend, who Schindler couldn’t save.

Tsalig refused to leave her. They both perished in Belzec.

Leyson’s father eventually secured a place in Schindler’s factory for his wife and remaining children. All of their lives were saved by this man. Leyson recalls one incident made famous in Spielberg’s film where a group of women were sent on a transport to Auschwitz and certain death. This group included Leyson’s mother and sister who were separated on arrival, his mother being consigned to the group who were considered too old and useless to be kept alive. “She was 42” he says. “42”. “The same age as our daughter is now.” Tears prevent him from saying more. Schindler secured the release of these women (over 300) and they were the only souls shipped to Auschwitz to ever leave there alive.

“Little Leyson” as Schindler named him, worked a twelve hour night shift in the factory standing on an upturned box to reach the machine controls. Schindler spoke to him on many occasions and sometimes left instructions that the boy be given double food rations. At the end of the war, Schindler gave “his” Jews a final gift. He traded whatever he had left for bolts of cloth and bottles of vodka knowing that these items could be bartered for whatever the Jews needed to return to their homes.

Leyson’s family spent the next three years in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Leyson’s brother, David and sister, Peaza, went to Israel and Leyson and his parents moved to the US. When Oskar Schindler visited Los Angeles in 1972, Leyson went to the airport to meet him. Fully expecting to have to introduce himself to Schindler he recounts how the big man walked up to him and said “I know you, you’re “little Leyson.”

Oskar Schindler is buried in a Roman Catholic cemetery in Jerusalem. It was his wish to be buried in Israel where most of his “children” lived. In 1962 Schindler was named a righteous gentile. The Talmud says:

”He who saves one life saves the world entire”



Leon Leyson remembers Schindler as his “Angel” and true hero. A hero he says, quoting Joseph Campbell, is someone who does the best of things in the worst of times. Todah rabah Mr.Leyson for your courage and strength. To bear witness is the greatest legacy.

Never again.