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This week's hero is...
Leo Bretholz
Leo Bretholz was born on March 6, 1921, in Vienna, Austria. He grew up as the son of Polish immigrants who had come hoping to make a better life. All of that changed in March of 1938, when the country of Austria was forcefully annexed by Nazi Germany. On March 12, 1938, the armies of the Third Reich marched though the streets of Vienna in was would be known as the Anschluss (joining). For Leo, this would be the beginning of seven year fight to stay alive.
Due to the rising levels of anti-semitism after the Anschluss, Leo's mother sent him to live with relatives in the country of Belgium. He lived there without incident for the next eighteen months and studied to be an electrician. However, all of that changed in May of 1940, when Nazi German launched it's blitzkrieg against Belgium. On May 9, Leo entered a hospital in Antwerp to be treated for a hernia. All of a sudden, bombs began to explode all around the city. Leo was forced to run from the hospital without before a bomb landed directly in the middle of the building. A day later, he was arrested by the Belgian police as an enemy alien (since he was Austrian) and sent to an internment camp in France.
However, Leo had no intention of remaining and escaped by crawling under the barbed wire fence. After reaching a safe-house, he hid with some of his relatives in France. But just a month later, the Nazis invaded and took over France. Within just days, they began to arrest and deport it's Jewish population. By October 1942, Leo decided to take a chance and cross the border between France and Switzerland. Unfortunately, he was caught be a Swiss patrol and turned over to the Nazis. He spent the next month in French prison camp at Drancy before being put on a convoy. It's destination was, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The convoy officially departed from Drancy on November 5, 1942. The cattle-cars that were carrying the prisoners were incredibly unsanitary and filthy. The car that was holding Leo was filled with at least two dozen people. By the second day, the floor was covered in feces and urine that made many people sick. However Leo was determined not to reach the train's destination. He noticed that the car had one window with two iron bars running horizontally across it. He tapped a friend he had made in Drancy (Manfred Silberwasser) and told him that they could attempt to escape through the window. After some pep talk from an elderly woman, Leo and Manfred decided to take a chance.
They pulled at the two bars, but they wouldn't budge. Leo realized that they needed pry the bars open with a rope like object. He and Manfred took off their sweaters, dipped them into the urine that was sloshing around on the floor, wrung the sweaters out, wrapped them around the bars, and began to twist. As the hours ticked by, they began to feel rust particles on their arms. They quickly sped up their work. After about five hours, they felt the bars beginning to bend and move. By 7 PM, the bars had bent enough and now there was space to climb through. Leo then squeezed through the small opening and found himself on the side of the cattle car, Manfred joined him about a minute later. They waited until the train slowed down at a curve in the tracks and jumped into the darkness.
Leo's ordeal was far from over. For the rest of the war, he continued to run and hide from the Nazis and their collaborators (he didn't get surgery for his hernia until 1944). By the time the war ended, he had successfully escaped his pursuers an incredible total of seven times. In 1947, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he worked as a book retailer and raised a family. In 1962, he learned that his mother and two sisters had been deported to Auschwitz 20 years earlier and were never heard from again.
In 1998, Leo published a memoir of his experience titled, Leap into Darkness, which recounted the story of his incredible fight to stay alive. It instantly became a best seller. He spent the rest of days contributing to Holocaust research projects and giving interviews of his experiences. He finally passed away on March 8, 2014, at the age of 93.
Leo Bretholz's story is one of the greatest tales of survival in human history. He faced an evil group of people who were determined to take his life. But because of his daring defiance and will to stay alive, they failed. He truly is someone to be held in high regard.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/leo-bretholz
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/leo-bretholz-holocaust-survivor-and-activist-dies-at-93/2014/03/10/922225ea-a867-11e3-8599-ce7295b6851c_story.html
Bretholz, Leo; Olesker, Michael (1998). Leap into Darkness: Seven Years on the Run in Wartime Europe. Baltimore, MD: Woodholme House Publishers.
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