Leon easily acquired the English language, he got a Master’s degree in Education, and he became a high school teacher. He was horrified to learn about how pernicious racism infiltrated even the country which he had grown to love. He was asked to move to the front because African Americans were required to sit in the back. Leon relates how he sat in the back of the bus in America in the 1950s. Visions of food clouded Leon's mind during dreams and wakefulness, and devising strategies for obtaining a few potato peels, a thin blanket and a few hours of sleep were his priorities. Schindler bribed the guards to release the family to him. On another occasion, the boy cried out to Schindler that he and his family were being taken to a death camp, against the factory owner’s wishes. He risked the wrath of a Nazi guard by indicating that his name had been crossed off of Schindler’s List. He managed to find his family members in the death camps in order to keep his hope alive. Though he died in 2013, Leon lived over 60 productive, happy, healthy years after living under starvation and brutal conditions, and, if he was lucky, 300 grams of bread (about 700 or 800 calories worth) on days in which he worked. It is important to note how extraordinary and important to our knowledge of history Leon Leyson himself was. Jews had numbers by which they were supposed to be referred to, and brutality was expected and required of the Nazi soldiers.
Unlike other Nazis, Schindler treated his factory workers with a certain humanity, and he remembered their names, despite the risk of severe punishment from other Nazis for doing so. Luckily for Leon, Schindler took a particular interest in the boy, and he was afforded privileges not given to others, such as the opportunity to work a 12-hour day shift, rather than the night shift. Oskar Schindler was an extraordinary character he saved Leon Leyson (formerly known as Leib Lejzon), his family, and over a thousand Jews from near certain death in the concentration camps, not once, but several times over.
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