Shlomo Pearl, a Holocaust survivor who lived under a false identity as a Nazi, has passed away - voila! news

He told his personal story in many places, and worked to deepen Holocaust awareness.

Shlomo Pearl (photo: official website, Wikipedia, Carlos Delgado)

Shlomo Perel, the well-known Holocaust survivor who lived under a false identity as a Nazi and even fought with the German army, passed away today (Thursday) at the age of 97. Shlomo told his personal story in many places, and worked to deepen awareness of the Holocaust.

Pearl was born in the city of Fein in northwest Germany to a Jewish family that immigrated from Russia.

After the Nazis came to power, he moved with his family at the age of ten to Lodz, Poland.

There, with the Nazi invasion, he escaped with his brother Yitzhak to the Soviet part of the country and joined a children's home.

In the German invasion there as well, he escaped again but was later captured by a unit of the German army.

Lived under a false identity as a Nazi and even fought with the German army.

Photographs from the Nazi occupation of Europe (photo: official website, Jewish People Archives, National Library)

Thanks to his mastery of the German language, Perel managed to convince his captors that his name was actually Josef Perel and that he was a German citizen living outside of Germany.

Thus, he was accepted into the German army for a unit where he served as a Russian-German interpreter and as part of his duties he even took part as an interpreter in the investigation of Stalin's son, who was an officer in the Red Army.

However, Pearl tried at every opportunity to escape from the army back to the Soviets, but without success.

Near the end of the war, he was captured along with his fellow members of the German unit by the United States Army, but because he was a junior recruit, he was released and not detained as a prisoner of war.

After the war Perel returned to his Jewish identity and after discovering that his second brother David lived in Israel, immigrated to Israel in July 1948, enlisted in the IDF and even fought on the Jerusalem front in the War of Independence. He married Deborah in 1959 and they had two sons.

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From "Europe Europe", a film based on the life of Shlomo Pearl (photo: screenshot, from the movie "Europe, Europe")

Years later, Pearl wrote his life story in an autobiographical book called "My name is Shlomo Pearl!".

The film "Europa Europa", based on his life story and in which he also participated, won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991, and was nominated for the Academy Award.

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