On November 11, 1938 he arrived in Antwerp, Belgium, where he stayed for a peaceful eighteen months, and went to a public trade school to become an electrician as an alternative to being sent to an internment camp.

While living with distant relatives nearby, he was sent to an assigned residence in Cauterets, France, near the Pyrenees Mountains, where he stayed for eight to ten months until on August 26, 1941, when the deportation began from this town.

Upon a warning from the mayor of Luchon, he hid with his uncle overnight in the Pyrenees, returning the next day to find half of the ghetto's population deported.

[1] Staying with two priests on subsequent nights, he and Manfred were given train tickets to Paris with a new set of false identification papers, this time under the name Marcel Dumont.

In October 1943, Leo Bretholz was taken with thirteen other men to the Toulouse train station en route to the Atlantic coast to build fortifications.

At this layover, he spent hours to bend the bars, then climbed out of the train window and escaped into the city of Toulouse.

Finally, Bretholz rejoined the underground movement, and remained in Limoges until departing on a ship for New York on January 19, 1947.

He moved into his own apartment with his friend Freddie, and met his wife Florine (née Cohen) in November 1951; they married in July 1952.

[5] Until his death in 2014, he lived in Pikesville, Maryland, and was a regular speaker at a range of venues, including the annual Holocaust Remembrance Project, and a number of schools.