Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #788579 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02-08
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .62 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Amazon.com
Solomon Perel's may be one of the strangest wartime memoirs ever committed to print. At the outbreak of World War II Perel, a young Polish Jew, was interned in a Soviet orphanage. Captured by Wehrmacht soldiers, Perel, fluent in Russian and German, passed himself off as an ethnic German and was adopted by the Nazi unit to act as a translator--and as something of a mascot. Sent to Berlin to an all-male military school, Perel managed against all odds to keep his secret (after the war, he revealed his true identity to his disbelieving comrades-in-arms); in the meantime, his family perished. Now available for the first time in English translation, the full book revels in a sharp sense of irony and an ever-unfolding abundance of improbable episodes.

From Library Journal
In this inspiration for the 1990 Golden Globe-winning film, Europa, Europa, appearing now in English translation, Perel details his remarkable story of survival as a Jewish boy during World War II. While fleeing eastward from German-occupied Poland, he fell into German hands. Amazingly, he managed to convince his captors that he, too, was German, though orphaned. The Germans accepted him into their ranks and sent him to an elite training school for the Hitler Youth until war's end. Though his story offers a vastly different view of the war, Perel spends less time on details of the Nazi regime and instead focuses on his fear of detection. The resulting repetition can make for disappointing reading. Perel's story is indeed incredible, but it is not that well written. Recommended only for large public libraries or Holocaust collections.?Jill Jaracz, Chicago, Ill.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
During World War II, Perel, a young German Jew, posed as a Nazi to survive. The recent film Europa, Europa is also Perel's story, but here he tells it and it is shorn of Hollywood theatrics. But the story remains strong. Separated from his family and trapped behind German lines, he claimed to be Lithuanian German and was hailed as "repatriated." Valued as a Russian interpreter, he became mascot of his army unit. He was too young to stay at the front, so he was sent back to Hitler Youth school. He excelled and was often held up as a model Aryan, though he constantly feared for his life. Three people, including an army doctor, learned his secret, but none betrayed him. The glimpses of life in Germany during World War II and Perel's return in Nazi uniform to his childhood neighborhood and reunions with family and friends are most haunting. Why did Perel masquerade as a Nazi? His mother's last words to him were: "You must survive." This story must, too. Kevin Grandfield