Schindler’s Apprentice

Leon Leyson: Oskar Schindler “was an extraordinary human being, not just for us but for everyone who was in his company.”

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

More than 60 years ago, little Leon Leyson steadied himself on top of a box each morning, climbing the makeshift step stool to operate the controls of a metalworking lathe machine that towered over his skinny 13-year-old body. 

Today that pint-sized worker is 80, the youngest survivor of Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow, the workplace that saved more than a thousand Polish Jews from death. He shared his story with New Yorkers for the first time Tuesday evening, at an event organized by Chabad-Lubavitch of Midtown. Only after Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” premiered in 1994, did Leyson begin speaking about his experiences working in Schindler’s enamelware factory and how he and some of his family members were able to survive the Holocaust.

n Leyson’s opinion, “Schindler’s List” paved the way for the slew of World War II resistance films that have become popular in Hollywood today — films like “Defiance,” “Valkryie” and “Inglourious Basterds,” which tell of survival rather than victimization. “Defiance” particularly strikes a chord with Leyson because he grew up very close to the story’s location, he said.

“Ever since Schindler’s List came out things turned a little bit,” Leyson told The Jewish Week prior to the event. “There was more interest generated in those events like Schindler, those people who rescued Jews. Rescuers didn’t come out and admit what they had done until Schindler’s List came out.”  Continue reading…