Leslie Meisels was born in Nádudvar, Hungary, in 1927. During the Nazi occupation, he and his family were confined in two ghettos in Hungary. Then they were sent to work as forced labourers in Austria and were then sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Leslie immigrated to the United States with his brother in 1958 and to Canada in 1967. He settled in Toronto. Leslie Meisels is the author of Suddenly the Shadow Fell.