Published by The Reporter
Posted: 03/17/2010 01:03:03 AM PDT

Man to share his story of surviving Holocaust
By Kimberly K. Fu

Leon Leyson was just 10 years old when his childhood was shattered.
For the next 40 or so years, he kept silent about the horrors he experienced and the loved ones he lost during the Holocaust.

Now 80, the youngest survivor of "Schindler's List" is set to share his nightmarish tale at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre, 1010 Ulatis Drive. Chabad of Solano County is sponsoring the event. For Leyson, telling his story means keeping it alive. It also raises awareness, ensuring that the atrocity is never forgotten or repeated.

In the late 1930s, Leyson went by a different name, Leib Lejzon. He, his parents and siblings had recently moved to Krakow, Poland, and were eagerly anticipating life in the "big city."
But within the year, the Nazis had invaded the country, and the Lejzons and other Jewish families were banished to a Krakow ghetto. "It was a place of complete madness," Leyson recalled. "People were being beaten on the street and shot, just random and unpredictable. I can remember that I was hungry all the time and I was scared all the time."

Still, the full impact of how life had changed for Jewish people had not yet made an impression on him. He took his cues from adults, he said, and their belief that the war would not last very long. Germany, after all, was known for its culture, Leyson said, "and all kinds of nice things."
Soon, though, the child saw that though he no longer was allowed to go to school, his Christian friends still did. "I realized there was something wrong," he remembered. "It didn't feel right."

His father lost his job and was later arrested. Three months later, he was released. When Oskar Schindler's enamelware factory opened up across the street from his father's former workplace, no one realized it would be a godsend. "It was quite a coincidence," he said. "Because of that, five of my family members survived. When you think about it, 90 percent of the Jewish people in Poland were murdered. It's very difficult. It's unimaginable."

Meanwhile, two of Leyson's brothers were killed. One escaped to their old hometown, where he was slain by the Nazis. Another died in a death camp.
When the ghetto closed two years later, factories were built to warehouse the Jewish people. Today, Leyson pointed out, those facilities are better known as death camps.
Following the ghetto's closure, the Lejzons were sent to a nearby concentration camp. Life, it seemed, went from bad to worse. "If the ghetto was bad, the concentration camp was like the end of the world," he said.

Within a short time, the family was sporadically sent to a housing area that Schindler built next to his facility. The young Leyson became a machine operator and occasionally ran into Schindler. The man, he said, was completely different from any Nazi he had ever met, or ever would meet. "He spoke to us using whole sentences," Leyson said. "Sometimes he'd stop and talk to me and ask me how I was doing. Not like the Nazis, who would bark commands. ... He was an entirely different human being." Schindler, he emphasized, was a genuine hero, one who risked all to save lives. "He undertook what he did to save 1,200 people and I survived because of that, because of one man who decided to do the right thing." That is a lesson for everyone, he said, adding, "You don't have to be perfect in order to be a hero."

When Poland fell to the Allies, the family was liberated. Leyson and his parents traveled to Boston in 1949 and settled in Los Angeles. He currently lives in Orange County. His sister and brother reside in Israel. Leyson calls himself "the most fortunate person on this planet." He survived the war, moved to the United States and began a new life that includes a wife, children and grandchildren.

Life, he said, is what you make it. "It's a choice. You have a choice to make on how you continue living. It would be wrong of me to be other than happy," he explained.
Leyson, a retired educator, speaks about the Holocaust to school groups, universities and community organizations.

Tickets for Thursday's event are $20 in advance or $25 at the door. To reserve tickets, call the theater at 469-4013 or visit www.vpat.net.