Shlomo Perel, who survived the Holocaust through surreal subterfuge and an extraordinary odyssey that inspired his own writing and an internationally renowned film, died on Thursday in central Israel. He was 98.
Perel was born in 1925 to a Jewish family in Brunswick, Germany, just several years before the Nazis came to power. He and his family fled to Lodz, Poland, after his father’s store was destroyed and he was kicked out of school. But when the Nazis marched into Poland, he and his brother, Isaac, left their parents and fled further east. Landing in the Soviet Union, Perel and Isaac took refuge at children's home in what is now Belarus.
