Alumni
Author Visits ISA
By
Don Morton, Alumni Coordinator
On April 12 this year, Leo Bretholz, author of the book Leap
into Darkness, visited ISA to talk about his life and work
to an audience of about forty eighth-grade students. The
visit also had a personal significance - Mr. Bretholz is
an ISA Alumni parent whose daughter Edie attended ISA more
than twenty years ago until the family's return to Baltimore.
Since then, he has been talking to audiences about his experiences
and has now finally written his memoires - just so "the youth
of today won't forget."
In
an inspiring and vivid presentation, Mr. Bretholz
told of his remarkable experiences as a young
man in wartime Europe and the influence these
have had on his life since then. In 1938, at
the age of 17, his mother sent him away from
Vienna and he ran undercover for 7 years, during
which time he was imprisoned several times
and escaped several more. His most memorable
escape was from the train taking him to Auschwitz
- indeed, it was this "leap into darkness" which
gave his book its title. Following his talk,
the students asked some thought-provoking questions,
two of which are elaborated upon in the following
letter from our Alumni Coordinator Don Morton
to ISA's Grade 8 teacher Grace Knox. This same
letter ends with a sentiment shared by the
school as a whole.
"The
first question about who his role models might
have been, if any, led Mr. Bretholz to recall
that his father had died when he was only nine
and that he had thereafter become a role model
of sorts himself for his mother and sisters,
and that later, after swimming a deep river
to temporary safety in Luxembourg in 1938,
he in fact really had no role models at all
and that the motive that drove him to survive &emdash;
such was his ability to see through to the
core of that question &emdash; was fear. Call
it seven years of angst. |
"His answer to the last great question of the afternoon concerning his belief
under the circumstances in the existence of God led to an answer fascinating
for its imagery and allusions. At the front of the boxcar as the train moved
eastwards towards Auschwitz was a rabbi-like figure praying towards the east,
towards Jerusalem as the Jews do, for deliverance. But if he had waited for deliverance
by the 'hand of God' he would not have survived, he said. He listened instead
to the lady with the crutch at the back of the box car who became a mother to
all the living imprisoned within it who told him and his friend to jump while
they could so they could tell the story, and he did that and was saved and he
remembers the old lady's eyes to this day, as he does those of his mother who
sent him from Vienna in 1938 and of the nurse who saved him later in Limoges.
Prayers will be meaningful to the one who prays, he said, and that is fine with
him. In this way he never quite answered directly the question of his own belief.
Not, I think, because he wished to avoid the question, but precisely because
it still engages him.
"Your
students asked telling, thoughtful questions,
more than the two I have mentioned here, and
I know they had more good questions in reserve
when time ran out. Your students made Leo Bretholz
happy at the age of 79 and gave him something
too, in return, to take away with him on the
evening train to Antwerp with his wife Flo.
There was a true engagement of minds. He felt
as if he had come home, and for all of this
I thank you, and him."
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A
Welcome from our Alumni Coordinator Don Morton
