Shlomo Perel, a Holocaust survivor through surreal subterfuge and an extraordinary odyssey that inspired his writing and an internationally acclaimed film, died Thursday in central Israel. He was 98 years old.
Perel was born in 1925 to a Jewish family in Brunswick, Germany, a few years before the Nazis came to power. He and his family fled to Lodz, Poland after his father’s shop was destroyed and he was expelled from school. But when the Nazis entered Poland, he and his brother Isaac left their parents and fled further east. Landed in the Soviet Union, Perel and Isaac took refuge in an orphanage in present-day Belarus.
When the Germans invaded in 1941, Perel again found himself trapped by the shifting front lines of World War II, this time captured by the German Army. To avoid execution, Perel disguised his Jewish identity, assumed a new name, and presented himself as an ethnic German born in Russia.
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He successfully passed, becoming the translator of the German army unit for prisoners of war, including the son of Stalin. With the end of the war, Perel returned to Germany to join the paramilitary ranks of the Hitler Youth and was drafted into the Nazi armed forces.
Shlomo Perel is pictured at his home in Givatayim, Israel. Perel, a Holocaust survivor, recently died at the age of 98.
(Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial via AP)
After the surrender of Germany and the liberation of the concentration camps, Perel and Isaac, survivors of the Dachau camp in southern Germany, were reunited. Perel became a translator for the Soviet military before emigrating to what is now Israel and joining the war surrounding his creation in 1948. His life regained a semblance of normalcy when he settled in a Tel Aviv suburb with his wife of Polish origin and became a manufacturer of zippers.
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“Perel was silent for many years,” Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, said in a statement, “mainly because he felt his was not a Holocaust story.”
But in the late 80s, Perel could no longer keep silent about the story of his wild move. He wrote an autobiography which later inspired the 1991 Academy Award nominated film Europa Europa.
As the film captivated audiences, Perel became a public speaker. He has traveled to tell the world what he witnessed during the turmoil of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were massacred by the Nazis, and to reflect on the painful paradoxes of his identity.
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“Shlomo Perel’s desire to live life to the fullest and tell her story to the world has been an inspiration to all who have met him and had the opportunity to work with him,” said Simmy Allen, spokesperson for Yad Vashem.
Perel died surrounded by family at his home in Givatayim, Israel.
