Leon Leyson > Quotes

“A hero is an ordinary human being who does the best of things in the worst of times.”
― Leon Leyson

“One time when we were in Płaszów a guard struck my mother on the side of her head with a wood plank. The blow permanently shattered her eardrum. She said that for the rest of her life she could hear her two murdered sons calling to her in that ear.”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List

“After all, what can we trust if not our own experience?”
― Leon Leyson

“Maybe I hadn’t really been ready to speak about my experiences until so many
years later, or maybe people hadn’t really been ready to listen, or maybe both.”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box

“Through the barbed-wire fences surrounding the camp, I could look out and sometimes see the children of the German officers strutting back and forth, wearing their Hitler Youth uniforms and singing songs praising the Führer, Adolf Hitler. They were so exuberant, so full of life, while just a few yards away from them I was exhausted”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List

“As a Jewish kid during those times, I fought to live every day. I didn't have a choice. As an influential Nazi, Schindler did have a choice. Countless times he could have abandoned us, taken his fortune, and fled. He could have decided that his life depended on working us to death but he didn't. Instead, he put his own life in danger every time he protected us for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. I am not a philosopher, but I believe that Oskar Schindler defines heroism. He proves that one person can stand up to evil and make a difference. I am living proof of that. I recall a television interview I once saw with scholar and writer Joseph Campbell. I've never forgotten his definition of a hero. Campbell said that a hero is an ordinary human being who does "the best of things in the worst of times". Oskar Schindler personifies that definition.”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box

“As I walked out of the ghetto with its tombstone-crowned walls and along the streets of Krakow, I was dumbfounded to see that life seemed just as it had been before I entered the ghetto. It was as if I were in a time warp...or as if the ghetto were on another planet. I stared at the clean, well-dressed people, busily moving from place to place. They seemed so normal, so happy. Had they not known what we had been suffering just a few blocks away? How could they not have known? How could they not have done something to help us? A streetcar stopped, and passengers boarded, oblivious to our presence. They showed absolutely no interest in who we were, where we were going, or why. That our misery, confinement, and pain were irrelevant to their lives was simply incomprehensible.”
― Leon Leyson

“At the beginning of December 1939, the Nazis decreed Jews could no longer attend school.”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List

“- No puedes sentarte ahí -dijo-. Los asientos traseros son para los negros. Tienes que cambiarte a la parte delantera.
Sus palabras me golpearon como una bofetada. De repente retrocedí en el tiempo hasta Cracovia, cuando los nazis ordenaron que los judíos nos sentáramos en los asientos traseros de los tranvías (antes de prohibirnos directamente viajar en transporte público). El contexto era muy diferente, pero de todos modos casi hizo explotar mi cabeza. ¿Por qué existía algo así en los Estados Unidos? Yo habría creído, erróneamente, que esa clase de discriminación estaba destinada únicamente a los judíos durante el régimen nazi. Ahora descubriría que la inequidad y el prejuicio existía también en ese país que yo habría aprendido a amar”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box

“The Nazi businessman whose safe he cracked, who had just hired him, was Oskar Schindler.”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List

“Eu nu sunt filozof, dar cred că Oskar Schindler reprezintă definiția eroismului. El este dovada că un singur om poate da piept cu raul și poate produce o schimbare. Eu sunt dovada vie a acestui lucru.”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box

“Cand veti creste mari, copii
Veti intelege
Cate lacrimi ascund literele
Si cat bocet”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box

“MY FIRST IMPRESSION OF PŁASZÓW as hell on earth never changed. I only needed one look to see that this was an entirely foreign place. No matter how difficult life had been in the ghetto, at least outwardly it had appeared a familiar world. Yes, we were packed like sardines into too few rooms, but those rooms were in normal apartment buildings. There were streets and sidewalks and the sounds of a city beyond the walls.”
― Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List