The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson

Title: The Boy on the Wooden Box

Author: Leon Leyson

Pages: 231

Finished: 3/6/2017

First Sentence: I had to admit, my palms were sweaty and my stomach was churning.

Summary: (taken from Goodreads)

Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) 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 sadism of the Nazis, including that of the demonic 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 Leon 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, the only memoir published by a former Schindler's List child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Most notable is the lack of rancour, the lack of venom, and the abundance of dignity in Mr Leyson's telling. The Boy on the Wooden Box is a legacy of hope, a memoir unlike anything you've ever read.

Thoughts: Novels about the Holocaust are one thing, but reading a first hand account is a completely different experience. It's easy to read a novel and remind yourself that it's fiction, even though it's about a real event. In a memoir, you don't get that comfort. These things actually happened to the person who's writing this story. The Boy on the Wooden Box is excellent for middle school kids wanting to know more about the Holocaust who aren't quite ready for the horrors they will encounter in Elie Wiesel's Night. That's not to say this book is without its own horrors. The time Leon spent in the Plaszow work camp was full of plenty of moments to make a person wonder how humanity could ever sink so low. The round ups of Jews in the ghetto were terrible. 

One of the hardest things about reading books about the Holocaust is trying to figure out how vast numbers of people could possibly let something like this happen. And yet... and yet even now, my government is doing its absolute best to demonize members of a certain religion, and people seem to be turning a blind eye to it. Please, read this book, but don't  believe that these things are just in the past.