Braunschweig, Germany – Volkswagen Pays Tribute to Jewish Member of Hitler Youth

Braunschweig, Germany – Volkswagen presented a commemorative tablet to Solomon Perel, 81, a Jew who survived the Holocaust by joining the Hitler Youth, they unveiled a plaque in the Volkswagen plant where he trained as a toolmaker during World War II.  

Perel’s had an extraordinary escape, by adopting the name Josef Perjell and pretending to be an ethnic German from Russia.
After he was captured in 1941 by a German army unit he talked his way into a job as an interpreter.  As he was too young to conscript into the German Army, he was sent to a Hitler Youth school at Braunschweig, near his birthplace, and granted an apprenticeship at Volkswagen, which was then making military vehicles.

The plaque commemorating his ordeal was made by a club of Volkswagen trainees and retirees who research the company’s history.
After the war, Solomon learned that his father had died of starvation in the Lodz ghetto, his mother was killed in a gassing truck and his sister was shot while on a death march.