Leon attends a reunion of Schindler's Jews in Los Angeles, where Schindler immediately and warmly recognizes him despite twenty years apart.

Leon grows up as the youngest of five children in a happy, close-knit Jewish family in the rural town of Narewka, Poland.

Leon's mother and siblings join his father in Kraków, hoping for a better life in the Polish capital.

Germany invades Poland, and Moshe and Hershel flee Kraków to avoid forced labor conscription, beginning the family's years of suffering.

The Gestapo breaks into Leon's home at night, beats his father Moshe, and drags him away to prison.

The Nazis establish a ghetto in Kraków and force Leon's family to share a cramped one-room apartment with another family.

Nazis burst into the family's apartment and seize Tsalig, who has no work permit, for deportation to the Belzec death camp.

The last ghetto residents are deported to Płaszów concentration camp, and Leon chooses to go with his mother rather than hide.

Commandant Amon Goeth singles out Leon and other male inmates and brutally flogs them during a work assignment at Płaszów.

Leon boldly approaches a Nazi guard and asks to be included in the transfer to Schindler's Emalia factory.

Leon and his family reunite at Emalia and experience Schindler's comparatively humane and decent treatment of his workers.

As the Soviets advance and Emalia faces closure, Leon cries out to Schindler to take him and his family to the new factory.

After a terrifying stay at Gross-Rosen concentration camp, Leon and the other male prisoners are transported to Schindler's new factory in Brünnlitz.

Schindler prevents Nazi officials from killing his Jewish workers, gives them parting gifts, and flees as Soviet forces close in.

Leon and his parents immigrate to the United States, arriving in Boston and traveling by train to begin a new life in Los Angeles.

Leon Leyson grows up in an idyllic Polish childhood before Germany's invasion plunges his Jewish family into oppression and terror. The family is forced into the Kraków ghetto, where Leon's beloved brother Tsalig is seized and deported to a death camp. After deportation to the brutal Płaszów concentration camp, Leon uses bold courage to secure a place in Oskar Schindler's factory, where his family is treated with unexpected humanity. When Schindler's factory is shut down, Leon again speaks up to ensure his family stays under Schindler's protection, and they survive a harrowing transfer to a new factory in Czechoslovakia. Schindler ultimately saves his workers from execution and frees them as the war ends, allowing Leon and his family to eventually rebuild their lives in the United States. Decades later, at a reunion in Los Angeles, Schindler recognizes Leon immediately, a moment that frames the entire memoir.

The headline events of Leon Leyson's Holocaust survival.

Leon's father Moshe leaves Narewka to work in a Kraków glass factory, beginning a years-long separation from his youngest son.

Newspapers in Kraków fill with accounts of Kristallnacht and antisemitic measures in Germany, spreading alarm through the Jewish community.

After Moshe is imprisoned, Leon and his brother David locate the prison and bring their father food packages every day.

Moshe secretly opens a safe for a local factory owner named Oskar Schindler, who is so impressed he offers Moshe a job.

Leon befriends teenage Nazi soldiers at their guard post, but when they learn he is Jewish, they break into his home and slap him.

In the ghetto, Leon forms a close friendship with Mr. Luftig, who tends his pipe collection and tells Leon stories about America.

During a Nazi deportation sweep, Leon watches Mr. Luftig and his wife be marched away; Mr. Luftig leaves Leon his glass thermos.

Leon and his friend Yossel carry a sick elderly woman to the ghetto infirmary after curfew and are shot at by Gestapo guards.

During a Nazi roundup, Leon and his mother hide in the rafters of a storage shed alongside two other boys.

While assigned to labor at Płaszów, Leon secretly sneaks away from his work group to visit his parents at great personal risk.

Schindler bribes Nazi officials to redirect the female prisoners away from Auschwitz and deliver them to his factory in Brünnlitz.

Schindler calls Leon to his private office at Brünnlitz, shares kind words, and gives him extra bread to take to his family.

Leon's family discovers that the Nazi Einsatzgruppen swept through Narewka and murdered Hershel and all the village's Jewish residents.

Antisemitic riots break out in Kraków after the war, and Leon's family decides they must flee the city for their own safety.

Leon serves in the Korean War, earns a master's degree, and teaches at the same Los Angeles high school for 39 years.

This pool traces the supporting events and personal moments that shaped Leon's wartime experience, from the first signs of danger in news reports about Nazi Germany to the small acts of courage and friendship that helped him endure. Key moments include Leon's father forming a fateful connection with Schindler, the bittersweet friendship Leon builds with the optimistic Mr. Luftig, and the terrifying nights spent hiding from Nazi roundups in the ghetto. At Płaszów, Leon risks his life simply to glimpse his parents, while at Brünnlitz, Schindler's quiet gestures of kindness sustain Leon through the war's final months. After liberation, the joy of survival is tempered by the devastating news of what happened to the family's relatives in Narewka, and continued antisemitism forces the family to flee Poland entirely. Leon ultimately rebuilds his life as a soldier, scholar, and dedicated teacher, carrying his experiences forward for decades.

The quieter moments and supporting events behind Leon's survival.

Leon's parents, recalling that German occupiers treated Poles with basic respect during World War I, mistakenly believe the new Germans will do the same.

Leon watches German military forces massed at the Vistula River bridge, poised to march into Kraków and seize the city.

Moshe returns to Kraków from his attempted flight looking bedraggled and exhausted, having been on the run with little food for days.

After weeks in prison, Moshe is released a visibly broken man, stripped of the dignity and confidence he once carried.

The Nazis ban Jewish children from attending school, forcing Leon to take a job at a soda factory to help support his family.

The Nazis force most Kraków Jews out of the city, but Leon's family is permitted to stay because of Moshe's official work permit.

Leon approaches the ghetto gates and notices rounded stones along the wall that resemble gravestones, sensing a terrible omen of what lies ahead.

Moshe gathers his courage and asks Schindler to hire David at Emalia, a bold request that saves David from deportation.

Before being forced out of the ghetto, Chanah deliberately smashes the family's furniture rather than let the Nazis claim it.

Leon discovers his name has been crossed off the transfer list to Emalia, threatening to separate him from his entire family.

Leon and fellow prisoners at Gross-Rosen are marched to the showers and discover with profound relief that water, not gas, comes out.

Schindler quietly moves Leon from the grueling night shift to the day shift, a small act Leon later credits with saving his life.

Schindler's grateful workers present him with a farewell ring made from a gold tooth, inscribed with a Talmud verse about saving a single life.

Following the release of Spielberg's Schindler's List film, Leon begins sharing his Holocaust story publicly for the very first time.

Leon reflects on Schindler's legacy and defines heroism as doing the best of things in the worst of times.

This pool focuses on the key turning points and revelations that determined Leon's survival, beginning with his family's fateful underestimation of the Nazi threat and ending with his decision to ensure Schindler's story is never forgotten. Each event marks a moment where a decision, discovery, or shift in understanding changed the course of Leon's life, from Moshe's broken return from prison to Leon finding his own name erased from Schindler's transfer list. Small but crucial acts of defiance and courage—Chanah destroying the family's furniture, Moshe asking Schindler to hire David—repeatedly show how individual choices shaped outcomes under impossible conditions. At the war's climax, the terrifying relief of discovering the Gross-Rosen showers dispense water rather than gas marks a pivotal reprieve before liberation. Decades later, Leon's choice to finally speak publicly about his experiences ensures that the story of Schindler's Jews endures as a testament to heroism in the darkest of times.