The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson

Reviewed by B. Ullsvik, April 2023

This book takes place in Poland during WW2. Leon Leyson 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 awfulness of the Nazis, including that of the rude Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow, the concentration camp outside Krakow. Ultimately, it was the generosity and cunning of one man, a man named Oskar Schindler, who saved 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. This book is the only published memoir of a child on Schindler’s List. It is a legacy of hope.