Podcast about a French railway’s role in the Holocaust tracks with US Jews post-Oct. 7

By Cathryn J. Prince

NEW YORK — Leo Bretholz jumped to save his life. It was November 6, 1942, and the 21-year-old was crammed into a French cattle car bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Knowing that certain death awaited, he and his friend Manfred Silberwasser decided to hurtle themselves through a window and off the moving train. Of the more than 1,000 Jews in that particular transport, only four, including Silberwasser and Bretholz, survived the Holocaust.