For almost five decades, Leon Leyson never said much about the horrors of Holocaust or the salvation of becoming one of Schindler's Jews.

But the film Schindler's List changed everything. Overnight everyone was interested in the subject - people were eager to hear from someone who had actually been there with Oscar Schindler. Leon Leyson found himself talking about and sharing a part of his life that was locked inside him for so long.

Oscar Schindler and his Jews

Many students have heard Leon Leyson tell the story of his sixteen-year-old brother, Tsalig, who refused Schindler's railway station offer of safety and chose instead to accompany his girlfriend to a death camp because he did not want her to be alone.

In Elinor J. Brecher's great book Schindler's Legacy Leyson tells how the Nazis took Tsalig and sent him with a transport to the death camp Belzec, though he might have been saved: "It seems that Oscar Schindler was at the station, looking to pull someone off the train. He had seen Tsalig at Emalia with Moshe - he had the memory of an elephant - and offered to take him off. But Tsalig didn't want to leave his girlfriend."

They were both murdered by the Nazis.

More than 60 years later , Leyson still cannot tell his brother's story without tears in his eyes.

Leon Leyson met Oscar Schindler once after the war, in 1972, when a group of survivors invited Schindler to Los Angeles. Leon was among those who welcomed him at the airport. He wasn't sure Schindler would recognize him, but no reminder proved necessary.

"I know who you are," said Oscar Schindler. "You are little Leyson ...!"

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