This undated photograph provided by Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial shows Shlomo Perel at his home in Givatayim, Israel. Perel, who survived the Holocaust through surrealist cunning and an extraordinary adventure that inspired his own work and an internationally acclaimed film, has died. He was 98.
Holocaust Yad Vashem Memorial via AP
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Holocaust Yad Vashem Memorial via AP
This undated photograph provided by Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial shows Shlomo Perel at his home in Givatayim, Israel. Perel, who survived the Holocaust through surrealist cunning and an extraordinary adventure that inspired his own work and an internationally acclaimed film, has died. He was 98.
Holocaust Yad Vashem Memorial via AP
JERUSALEM — Shlomo Perel, survivor Damage through a surreal trick and an extraordinary adventure that inspired his own work and an internationally acclaimed film, passed away on Thursday in central Israel. He was 98.
Perel was born in 1925 to a Jewish family in Brunswick, Germany, just 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, abandoned their parents and fled further east. Landing in the Soviet Union, Perel and Isaac took shelter at a children’s home in present-day Belarus.
When the Germans invaded in 1941, Perel found himself trapped again by the shifting front lines of World War II — this time, captured by German troops. To avoid execution, Perel disguised his Jewish identity, adopted a new name, and posed as an ethnic German born in Russia.
He successfully passed, becoming the interpreter of the German military unit for prisoners of war, including for Stalin’s son. When the war ended, Perel returned to Germany to join the paramilitary ranks of the Hitler Youth and was drafted into the armed forces of Nazi Germany.
After Germany surrendered and the concentration camps were liberated, Perel and Isaac, survivors of the Dachau camp in southern Germany, were reunited. Perel worked as an interpreter for the Soviet military before emigrating to present-day Israel and joining the war surrounding its founding in 1948. His life returned to normal when he settled abroad. umbrella Tel Aviv with his wife of Polish descent and became a zipper maker.
“Perel has remained silent for many years,” Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, said in a statement, “primarily because he felt that his story was not one of Holocaust.”
But in the late 1980s, Perel could no longer keep quiet about his wild gamble story. He wrote an autobiography that later inspired the 1991 Academy Award-nominated film “Europa Europa”.
As the film captivated the audience, Perel became a public speaker. He travels to tell the world what he witnessed during the tumultuous period of the Holocaust, during which 6 million Jews were massacred by the Nazis, and to reflect on the contradictions of the Holocaust. painful reasoning about his identity.
Yad Vashem spokesperson Simmy Allen said: “Shlomo Perel’s desire to live life to the fullest and tell his story to the world of Shlomo Perel is an inspiration to everyone who has met and had the opportunity to work with him. that.
Perel died in the arms of his family at his home in Givatayim, Israel.
