Solomon Perel

Solly Perel, 2001

Solomon Perel (also Shlomo Perel or Solly Perel) is an author and motivational speaker. He was born 20 April, 1925 in Peine, Lower Saxony, Germany to a German Jewish family. He escaped persecution by the Nazis by masquerading as an ethnic German. His life story is told in the 1990 film Europa Europa based on his autobiography Ich war Hitlerjunge Salomon (I Was Hitler Youth Salomon).

Early life and invasion

The Perels were harshly persecuted like so many other German Jews when the Nazis came to power, and Solomon's father eventually moved the family to Łódź, Poland in 1935 after their shoe shop was deliberately pillaged by German Nazi vandals.

When the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, Solomon and his brother Isaak attempted to escape to the Soviet-occupied part of Poland. Solomon succeeded and was placed in a Komsomol-run orphanage in Grodno whilst his brother was unable to join him remaining in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Masquerade

Solomon fled from the orphanage when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and was captured by a German army unit. Since he was a native German and spoke the language perfectly, Solomon was able to convince his captors that he was a Volksdeutscher (an ethnic German living outside Germany) and was subsequently accepted into his captors' unit as a Russian-German interpreter. He played a key role in the capture of Joseph Stalin's son, a Red Army officer, and thereafter became endeared to his German army unit. As a circumcised German Jew, Perel was constantly in danger of being discovered by his military unit, and attempted on several occasions to flee back to the Soviets, each time without success.

Since he was still a minor, Solomon was sent to a Hitler Youth school in Braunschweig, where he continued to hide his Jewish identity under the name of Josef Perjell (changed to Josef Peters for the film Europa Europa). At the time he had a girlfriend by the name of Leni. She was a fervent Nazi so although Solomon loved Leni he dared not tell her that he was Jewish for fear of her informing the authorities. Later, Leni's widowed mother discovered Solomon was Jewish but refused to reveal his secret.

Close to the end of the war Solomon was captured by a US-Army unit, but released the next day. After traveling back to his home town, and making dozens of written inquiries, he finally located his brother Isaak. Solomon learned that his father had died of starvation in the Łódź ghetto, his mother was murdered in a gassing truck and his sister was shot while on a death march.

After the war

In 1948 Perel resettled in the newly independent Israel where he joined the army to fight in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He later left the Israeli army to become a businessman. Solomon did not return to Germany until 1985 at the invitation of the Mayor of Peine to take part in a commemoration of the destruction of the Peine Synagogue.

Autobiography and film

Perel later wrote a book about his exploits entitled Ich war Hitlerjunge Salomon (I Was Hitler Youth Salomon). His work was later adapted into the 1990 film Europa Europa, produced by CCC Film. Solomon often tours and gives talks throughout Europe about his wartime experiences.

See also

• Alex Kurzem

The Dutch playwright Carl Slotboom has recently written a play based on Perel's story called "Du sollst leben" (Dutch: "Je zult leven"), which will first be aired in Zevenbergen, Netherlands on May 4th, 2012, which is also Remembrance Day in the Netherlands. Salomon Perel will also be visiting Zevenbergen to see the play. www.snippersonline.nl

References

• Perel, Solomon (1997). Europa Europa. John Wiley & Sons Inc. ISBN 0-471-17218-9. 
• French: Perel, Shlomo, 1925-, Europa, Europa (Paris: Ramsay, 1990), translated from the Hebrew by Lysette Hassine-Mamane, 265 pages.
• Hebrew: Korim li Shelomoh Perel! (Tel-Aviv: Yedi'ot Aharonot, 1991); Eropah, Eropah (Tel-Aviv: Yedi'ot Aharonot, 1994, 2004)
• Polish: Europa, Europa (Warszawa: Wydawn. Cyklady, 1992)
• German: Ich war Hitlerjunge Salomon (München: Heyne, 1993; Berlin: Nicolai, 1998, 2001)
• German/Dutch/English: Du sollst leben/Je zult leven/You shall live (Play by the Dutch Author Carl Slotboom)

External links

• College course page with 3 text excerpts and 5 photographs
• Student paper with summary, discussion and links