Solomon Perel

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 (Wehrmacht).Solomon became endeared to his German army unit, and many years later, already in Israel, was invited to the 12th Panzer Division Reunion.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.She was a member of the Nazi-instituted League of German Girls (BDM), so although Perel loved Leni, he dared not tell her that he was Jewish, fearing of her informing the authorities.After traveling back to his birthplace, and making dozens of inquiries, he finally located his brother Yitzhak, who was also able to escape to the Soviet Union, and at that time was married and living in Munich (in the movie, Yitzhak survives a Nazi camp and meets Solomon accidentally after being liberated by the Red Army).He learned that his father had died of starvation in the Łódź ghetto, his mother was murdered in a gassing truck in 1944, and his sister was shot while on a death march.The Dutch playwright Carl Slotboom wrote at the request of Salomon Perel a play based on Perel's story titled Du sollst leben (Dutch: Je zult leven; English: You shall live), which was first staged in Waalwijk, Netherlands, in 2002, which is also Remembrance of the Dead in the Netherlands.