Speaking to mark the publication of his new memoir,Ivor Perl describes how he surviced both Ausch and Dachau concentertion camps during the Holocaust
Hungarian Jews pictured being selected for slave labour or the gas chamber at Auschwitz, May-June 1944 Auschwitz and Dachau have become bywords for the genocide of European Jews and other persecuted groups during the Second World War. Millions of people died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators in these camps, with the horror of what took place casting a long shadow across the world.
Of the six million Jews who were killed, almost 1.5 million were children. A much smaller number survived but the majority of them lost their families and were burdened with traumatic memories for life. Today, the surviving children of the Holocaust remain committed to ensuring that similar crimes against humanity never occur again.
One such survivor is Ivor Perl. He and his elder brother Alec were the only survivors from their large Hungarian Jewish family and endured unimaginable suffering in several concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau. Here Ivor, the author of the recently published memoir Chicken Soup Under The Tree, recalls Jewish life during his childhood, the terrible conditions in the camps and how his brother repeatedly saved his life.
Cheder in Makó
Born as Yitzchak Perlmutter in 1932, Ivor grew up in a large Orthodox Jewish family in the Hungarian town of Makó. His father worked in the vegetable wholesale business, with the young Yitzchak having four brothers David, Mordechai, Abroham (later known as Alec) and Moishe, and four sisters Raizel, Blume, Malka, Faigale.
Ivor received a religious education. “I spent a lot of time in cheder, which is a Jewish study school,” he says. “During the early 1940s there were no pavements or central heating so life was very cold and basic. I would get up at five or six in the morning and go to Hebrew classes until about 8am. We would then have a small breakfast and once we’d eaten we’d go back to studies. There was then an hour for lunch before going back to studying again.”
With lessons mainly focussing on Hebrew, Ivor’s education was restricted but he remembers the values it taught him: “If I had that life again I would still have a religious education rather than a secular one. It was much more restrictive but far more humane. Religion doesn’t teach you about atomic bombs, etc. It instead teaches you about life.”
Makó’s Jewish community was well established with three synagogues but anti-Semitism pervaded everyday life. “Jews in Hungary go back over 900 years but they were never considered equal. Nevertheless, we lived with it. When I got up as a child I would think: ‘
