A Jewish Teen Lived as a Nazi to Escape the Holocaust

Imagine being a happy-go-lucky teenage Jew during World War II being kidnapped by a group of Nazi soldiers demanding to know if you’re Jewish. Answering yes is an instant death sentence; saying no is also a death sentence, but from your dad's advice, it would be a disgrace to your Jewish heritage. Solomon Perel wanted to live. He claimed to be ethnically German and lived his life as a German youth under the Nazi regime.  

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Solomon Perel was born in 1925 in Perine, a small town in northern Germany. He grew up in a prominent Jewish family and spent his time playing, studying, and enjoying time with his family. He spoke Yiddish in the home and German in public. In the 1930s, the situation for Jewish people in Germany became dire as the Nazi regime rose to power.

The rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime led to anti-Semitic laws and policies that restricted the rights of Jewish citizens. The Nazis aimed to racially purify Europe as an Aryan state, which meant eliminating Jews and other groups deemed undesirable, including disabled individuals. Their ultimate goal was to eradicate Jews from Europe, fueling the genocide known as the Holocaust.

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were the first of many discriminatory anti-Semitic laws. These laws forbade Jews from holding certain jobs, attending universities, and participating in many aspects of public life.

Jewish businesses were boycotted, and residents endured hostility and violence from neighbors and the public at large.

The laws enabled Nazis to marginalize and dehumanize Jews, use propaganda to spread hatred and fear of Jews and present them as a threat to German people, as vermin and subhuman individuals.  Life was unbearable for many families, including the Perel family.

The Perel Family Escape to Poland

In 1939, the Perel family fled to Poland to escape the persecution in Germany. World War II broke out two years later, and the Nazi army soon invaded the country, bringing the same horrors to Jews in Poland that they had just escaped in Germany. The family was forced into a ghetto, although 16-year-old Solomon and his brother managed to escape.

During the chaos of war, the brothers became separated.  

Solomon thought about the advice his parents had given him: his mother encouraged him to do whatever it took "to live," while his father encouraged him to stay true to his Jewish heritage at any cost.

Solomon and other youths were captured by German soldiers. When asked if he was Jewish, Solomon denied it, claiming he was fully German.

A New Identity

Despite the difficult circumstances, Solomon wanted to live. He took his mother's advice and adopted the identity of Josef Penjell, a German Nazi soldier.

He briefly worked as a translator for the unit that had captured him and even participated in the interrogation of Joseph Stalin’s son, Yakov Dzhugashvili. Later, he was sent to a Hitler Youth camp, where he was surrounded by German Nazi-influenced youths.

Life was anything but easy for Solomon. He lived in constant fear that he would mistakenly reveal his true identity and the consequences of such a mistake.

As a German child, Solomon wore a Nazi uniform and took on the same ideology. He yelled "Heil Hitler" like the others and sang anti-Jewish songs. He praised anti-Jew propaganda and pretended to want to eradicate their existence.

He faced tremendous psychological tolls. What had become of his family? Were they alive?  The impact amplified as he was forced to make difficult moral choices to save his own life. Daily, he witnessed the horrors the Nazi regime inflicted on his people. Staying silent weighed heavily on his heart, but he dared not question the brutality surrounding him. Yet, the fear of death overshadowed those worries. Solomon found solace in knowing that he wasn’t in immediate danger of being executed, unlike other Jews in the area.

The Lie is Over, But The Struggle Had Just Begun

In 1945, after nearly four years of living under the Nazis and enduring unimaginable horrors, the Third Reich collapsed, and Soviet forces liberated him.

After the war ended, Solomon learned that his entire family, including his sister, did not survive the Holocaust. He resumed his Yiddish identity and heritage, although he struggled to come to terms with the moral compromises he made to stay alive and the unimaginable horrors he had witnessed. He relocated to Israel and married while he struggled to put his time as a Nazi soldier behind him and return to his Jewish way of life.

“To this day, I have a tangle of two souls in one body,” he told the Washington Post in 1992. “By this, I mean to say that the road to Josef, the Hitler Youth that I was for four years, was very short and easy. But the way back to the Jew in me, Shlomo, or Solly, was much harder.”

He shared his story publicly for the first time in the 1980s after surviving a heart attack. The 1990 film Europa Europa is based on Solomon’s autobiography.

Solomon died on Feb. 2, 2023, in Givatayim, Israel, at the age of 97.