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Leo Bretholz leaped from an Auschwitz-bound train in 1941 at the insistence of a woman with crutches who yelled, "If you jump, maybe you will be able to tell the story."

That "Leap into Darkness," the title of his newly released book, became one of many escapes — some botched, some successful — in the seven years Bretholz struggled to survive in wartime Europe.

"The four-letter word 'fear' is a great motivator," he said, addressing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's second annual Book-and-Author dinner held Jan. 25 in San Francisco. at the St. Francis Hotel.

Speaking to an audience of about 150, the Baltimore-area survivor discussed his years traversing war-torn Europe.

At his mother's urging, Bretholz fled his home in Vienna in 1938.

He let an ice-cold, rain-swollen river carry him to Luxembourg, where he was detained and sent to a French commune, only to be asked to leave for security reasons.

A series of arrests and deportations led him to Belgium and finally to an internment camp in France.

He escaped the camp in 1941, trekking 70 miles to get to Switzerland, only to be arrested again and sent back to a holding camp in France.

There, he was loaded onto a train for Auschwitz-Birkenau, but Bretholz made his leap into darkness just before the train reached its destination.

With the help of a new friend, he managed to bend two window bars to allow just enough space to squeeze through.

After the miraculous escape, Bretholz returned to France. He was arrested again, spending nine months in prison. After his release, he tried to leave France again, but he was caught with falsified papers and sent to a labor camp.

He made a second leap, from a train that was transferring him to another labor camp, and spent the next two years with the French Resistance. Finally, in 1947, Bretholz made it to America. He married, had children and settled in Baltimore, where he ran two book stores.

Three years ago, Bretholz got in touch with a French nurse, a nun, who had saved his life in 1944, keeping his Jewish identity secret after he had collapsed in the street with a hernia.

"She said her name was Joan of Arc, and she told me, 'As long as I am in this ward, you have nothing to fear.'"

"Joan of Arc" and the woman on the train, Bretholz said, made it possible for him to tell his story.

"To ignore the past means to commit another holocaust, it means to commit an intellectual holocaust. I promised myself that I will be heeding the words of the woman on those crutches and telling my story as long as my legs can carry me."