Holocaust survivor, musician, composer, and diarist. Born Lazar (Leon) Szpilman into a family of celebrated musicians in Ostrowiec, Poland. His father Ruben Shpilman was a well-known violinist and orchestra leader. He was a first cousin of the pianist and composer, Wladyslaw Szpilman. He was proficient at piano and violin at a young age. By age nine, he played piano to accompany silent films and later joined municipal orchestras and traveled with dance bands. He married Mania Goldman, his childhood sweetheart When the German army occupied Poland in 1939, Spellman returned to Ostrowiec and later helped establish the ghetto orchestra. His musical gifts drew the attention of a guard, who lightened Spellman's workload in exchange for accordion lessons. The guard later helped him and his wife escape to the nearby forests, where they lived for months. Several members of their families, including some of Spellman's seven siblings, were sent to camps and killed. Leo and Mania miraculously survived, hiding in the forests and then thanks to the offer of shelter from a 21-year old Polish student, Henryk Wronski, who hid the couple for 18 months. After the end of the war, they lived in their hometown until arrival at Furstenfeldbruck displaced persons camp near Munich. There Leo composed a symphony titled Rhapsody 1939-1945 . It was performed only once by Spellman and some Jewish musicians at the camp. When the Spellmans immigrated to Canada in 1948, they tried to bury their painful memories of the Holocaust. The score for Rhapsody 1939-1945 remained packed away in a suitcase in the garage for another 53 years. In Toronto, Leo was reunited with his sister Chana, who had survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, He worked as a composer, concert pianist, cantorial accompanist, and music director of the Toronto Jewish Theater. He founded the popular Leo Spellman Orchestra, which played more than 1,000 weddings, bar mitzvah and other parties. He also had a successful sideline in property development. In 1998 a musicologist from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum contacted him about his symphony and came to Toronto to help unearth Leo's scores. Rhapsody 1939-1945 had its North American premiere in Washington in January 2000 and was later presented in other U.S cities. Leo's daughter, Helene, and her children urged him to make a recording of the symphony. In 2011, he asked Paul Hoffert, the award-winning composer, to assemble and conduct an orchestra, and arrange a recording session. They spent six months reconstructing the score and expanding it into a longer orchestral work. The piece depicts three themes: the horror of war; the sadness of loss; and the resilience of the human spirit and hope for a better tomorrow. The Canadian premiere took place on September 3, 2012, in front of a sold-out audience as part of the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto. At the time, Leo was seven months shy of his 100th birthday and surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and 105-year–old sister Chana. Helene said, "My father's Rhapsody captured the enormity of this tragedy, and his own personal sense of sorrow and loss. It became his healing." After Leo passed away, his family discovered his secret diary from 1943 to 1945, when he and his wife were hiding in an apartment in Ostrowiec. Holocaust scholars consider the diary a significant historical find as contemporaneous witness accounts are rare. A documentary film, The Rhapsody, encompassing the harrowing tale of survival, secret wartime diary and musical masterpiece lost for over a half-century, premiered in July 2022 in Toronto and on Canadian television in April 2023.