The Fascinating Story of the Boy Who Survived the Nazis by Pretending to Be One

Soloman Perel was a German Jew persecuted during World War II. However, he found a way to survive the holocaust; even though he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, he was sent there as a German.

Perel posed as a member of the Hitler Youth to escape the Germans. He ate, trained and was schooled with the enemy. Taking on a completely different persona Soloman Perel, known as Shlomo and Solly, survived against all odds.

Early Life

Perel was born in Peine on April 21, 1925. His father, Azriel, owned a shoe store and his mother, Rebecca Perel, was a homemaker. At the beginning of the Nazi oppression, his family decided to move to the safer town of Lodz in Poland.

When he was eight years old, Hitler seized power in Poland. In 1935, two years after the occupation started, Jews were stripped of all rights and citizenship, and Perel was expelled from school.

German Occupation

The Jewish families in Lodz were ordered into the ghettos during the German invasion. The ghetto would eventually house as many as 164, 000 Jews. Perel went to live there with his family.

The same year, he fled the ghetto with his older brother Isaac. The plan was to find a safe place to live on the Soviet-controlled side of Eastern Poland. However, in Bialystok, he parted company with Isaac and Perel was placed by a Jewish assistance organisation in a Soviet orphanage in Grodno.

Here, Perel remained for two years when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22 1941. Perel tells how the Jewish children were roused and told to flee from the German attack.

It was not long until he was captured in the German Wehrmacht in an open field near Minsk. Scared for his life, especially if his captors knew he was Jewish, he went to a nearby field and dug a pit in the soft ground burying his identity papers.

When asked if he was Jewish, he remembered his father telling him he should 'Always remain a Jew' and his mother stating, 'You must live,' taking his mother's advice, he lied and stated he was German.

Hitler Youth

The captors took him with them, where he worked as a translator. It was here that he took on the identity of Josef Perjell. He even took part in interrogating Joseph Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili. He impressed the unit he worked for so much that his superiors sent him to join the Hitler Youth.

Perel states in his memoirs that he felt at times as if he had a split personality, a Nazi during the day and a Jew at night. Perel/Perjell was sent to a boarding school in Braunschweig, Germany, during the winter of 1941–42.

During his time in Germany, he absorbed the knowledge of National Socialism. He surrounded himself with young Nazis who thought he was a true believer. He would wear the uniform with a swastika and Nazi eagle on his chest, preparing for military service.

As the war ended, Perel was sent to the Western Front and was assigned to a unit guarding prominent bridges.

Life as a German

Perel states that he was very relieved on entering the school to see that the showers had separate stalls, which prevented them from seeing he was Jewish through his circumcision.

Perel never forgot his roots, though. During the Christmas holiday in 1943, he received a holiday pass and returned to Lodz. For twelve days wearing his traditional black uniform, he searched the ghetto for his family. His mother, father and sister, Bertha, were not found and would never be seen again.

Life after Yosef

While guarding bridges in the unit, his squad was arrested by American soldiers. Ironically, he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp; this signified the end of the war for Joseph Perjell. As this identity faded away and he once again became Soloman Perel.

Perel moved to Munich, where he once again became a translator, this time for the Soviet Army during the interrogations of those considered to be Nazi war criminals.

After this, he emigrated to Palestine, where he fought in the Israeli War of Independence, going on to manage a zipper factory.

In 1959, Perel married Dvora Morezky the couple had a son. Perel had a heart attack in the 1980s when he decided it was time to tell his story for the first time; frightened at how it was received, he didn't need to worry; it became an instant success. The memoir was turned into a film, Europa Europa, which won the Golden Globe in 1991.

Only his brothers Isaac and David survived the war. Dvora died in 2021; Perel joined her on February 2 2022, in Tel Aviv at ninety-seven. When asked about Josef Perjell, he stated

I have a tangle of two souls in one body. I love him because he saved my life.- Soloman Perel