Solomon Perel was born on 21 April 1925 in
Peine,
Lower Saxony, to Jewish parents who had immigrated to Germany from Russia. When the Nazis came to power, systematic persecution of Germany's Jewish citizens began. In 1935, the Perel family relocated to
Łódź, Poland, where Solomon's aunt lived, after their shoe store was looted and Perel was expelled from his school. After the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, Solomon Perel and his brother Yitzhak attempted to escape to the
Soviet-occupied part of Poland. Solomon succeeded and was placed in a
Komsomol-run orphanage in
Grodno, while his brother made his way to
Vilnius in Lithuania. Perel fled from the orphanage after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and was captured near Grodno by the
12th Panzer Division. Since he was a native German speaker, Perel 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. Solomon became endeared to his German army unit, and many years later, already in Israel, was invited to the 12th Panzer Division Reunion. The unit's commanding officer even made plans to adopt him, providing him with further protection. In his capacity of an interpreter, he later participated in interrogation of
Joseph Stalin's son,
Yakov Dzhugashvili, who was captured near
Liozna. Contrary to the fictionalized description in the movie
Europa Europa, this episode did not affect his career in the Wehrmacht, as it happened much later than his own capture. As a
circumcised 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 unsuccessfully. He conjured various excuses to avoid medical examinations that would have revealed he was circumcised. One army doctor took a sexual interest in him, and on one night when he had entered the shower after everyone else had left, the doctor attacked him from behind and attempted to rape him. Perel managed to fight him off, but when he turned around, the doctor saw that he was circumcised and realized he was a Jew. The doctor did not inform on Perel, as doing so would have exposed him as a homosexual. According to Perel, "I knew his secret and he knew mine, and after that incident he took care of me until he was killed." Being still a minor, Perel was told he could not remain with the army. Instead, he was sent to a
Hitler Youth boarding 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). While there he was put through classes on Nazi racial theory and pre-military preparation exercises. In order to hide the fact that he was circumcised, he refrained from showering with other students whenever possible or showered while facing the wall or while wearing underwear. Perel died in
Tel Aviv, Israel on 2 February 2023, at the age of 97. ==
I Was Hitler Youth Salomon==