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The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

Holocaust survivor saved by Oskar Schindler writes memoir, but died just after finishing it

By: The Associated Press

Posted: 03/4/2013 7:14 AM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 03/4/2013 7:03 PM

NEW YORK, N.Y. - One of the youngest Holocaust survivors saved by Oskar Schindler has a book deal, for a manuscript completed shortly before he died.

Leon Leyson's "The Boy On the Wooden Box" will be published by Atheneum on Aug. 27, the publisher announced Monday. According to Atheneum, the book will provide an "unprecedented perspective" on Schindler, the industrialist credited with helping to save more than 1,000 Jews during the Second World War. His story was immortalized in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning "Schindler's List."

Leyson, meanwhile, became a popular speaker who travelled nationwide to tell his story of life under the Nazis.

Leyson was nearly 10 when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Six months later, his family was sent to a ghetto in Krakow. He survived as mass killings and deportations to concentration camps escalated.

He was 13 when Schindler rescued him from the ghetto. He settled in California after the war and died at age 83 in January, the day after Atheneum received his manuscript.

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