He had sworn, through tears, that he was of “Aryan race” to the Nazi soldiers who had captured him after the advance in Russia and to save his life he enrolled in the Hitler Youth and wore the Nazi uniform: Solomon Perel, survivor of the Holocaust, died Thursday February 2 at the age of 97 in Israel, as reported by the ‘Jerusalem Post’. Perel reverted to his Jewish identity after World War II and discovered that his brother David was already living in Israel. Perel followed in July 1948 and fought on the Jerusalem front in the War of Independence.
Many years later Perel told his story in his autobiography ‘Europa Europa’ (published in Italian by Guanda), which inspired the 1990 film of the same name directed by Agnieszka Holland and starring Marco Hofschneider: it won the 1991 Golden Globe as best foreign language film and was also nominated for an Oscar. Over the past half century Perel has told the story of him in myriad different places and has been an active Holocaust educator.
Born on April 21, 1925 in Peine, in Lower Saxony, in 1935 Sally Perel – as she was known and as she signed herself – fled with her family of Russian Jewish immigrants from Germany and the Hitler regime and settled in Poland. A few years later the war breaks out and Sally has to set out again towards the East, together with a brother who will soon separate from him. He finds himself alone in the Soviet Union, is received in an orphanage and then enlisted in the Communist youth. The German advance in Russia, the collapse of the Red Army have an inevitable and terrible consequence for the young Sally: he falls into the hands of the Nazis. At this point, he could begin a brief story of ordinary horror: being sent to a lager, death in the gas chambers. The true story of Sally Perel, on the other hand, takes a completely unexpected route, as if to offer a new demonstration of the extraordinary narrative richness that emerges from a war, from a great collective drama.
In fact, the very young Jew declares himself of Aryan race and manages to convince his captors; he becomes the mascot of a Nazi armored corps, and participates in some of the culminating events of the Russian campaign. Then, from the Eastern Front he is shipped to Germany and placed in a Hitler Youth school, where he is educated in the same creed that would like to annihilate him, along with millions of other Jews. Until the end of the conflict, in an increasingly devastated Germany, Sally will desperately play her part in a Nazi uniform, and her excellent performance, combined with his luck, will ensure his salvation.
(by Paolo Martini)