From: afrydman@granpa.enet.dec.com (Avi Frydman)
Subject: Re: Solomon Perel-"Europa, Europa"
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 18:48:49 GMT


In article <199212231400.AA07118@yfn.ysu.edu>, aa324@yfn.ysu.edu (Marlene Miller) writes...
> 
> 
>Lenore Levine writes:
> 
>>I recently saw the very good movie, "Europa, Europa." This movie
>>is based on the wartime experiences of Solomon Perel, a young German
>>Jew who pretended to be German and a member of the Hitler Youth.
>>
>>My question is: His experiences, while they made a great movie,
>>seemed too implausible to be true. Were they verified?
>

The following is from the movie reviews newsgroup. It may answer
some of the questions.
====================================================================== 
Article: 1592
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews
From: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Subject: MISC: Solomon Perel on EUROPA, EUROPA
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1992 21:36:27 GMT

			 Solomon Perel on EUROPA, EUROPA
			            [SPOILERS]
		          Comments by Elizabeth G. Levy
			Copyright 1992 Elizabeth G. Levy

     On Wednesday, one of the Jewish organizations at Columbia showed
EUROPA, EUROPA, with Solomon Perel (about whom the film is about) as a
guest speaker.  I thought it was an interesting event, and I've put
together a short summary of his remarks on the film, seeing how it's
popped up for discussion a few times in this newsgroup
[rec.arts.movies].

I suppose there are spoilers....



     First of all, Mr. Perel knows very little English, so there was a
translator.  (She had a slight Israeli accent, and the sound system is
not Presidential Inauguration Quality, so things were not peachy clear
at times.)  Also, I'll try to say "Solly" when I mean the character in
the film, and "Perel" when I mean the actual man.

     First, some interesting historical anecdotes that weren't in the
film: the German corporal who captured Perel in Russia survived the war.
Perel went to see him a couple of years ago, with an Israeli reporter.
The corporal said that he decided to believe him, out of all the POWs
being processed because "there was a spark from god at that moment."
The film tries to portray this by having the sun break through the
clouds when Solly first said he was a native-born German.  The name he
came up with, Joseph Peters, was because "Peters" sounded like "Perel."
"Solomon" would have been, well, a bit obvious, and "Joseph" was the
next best thing.  The second anecdote: the professor in the Hitler
Jungend school also survived the war (the one who measured Solly's head
and declared him to be an Aryan, not a pure bread Aryan, but an Aryan
nonetheless).  Perel ran into him a couple weeks after the end of the
war.  After exchanging pleasantries, he asked, "Did you know I am a
Jew?"  The professor reportedly went into shock, his face moving through
the colors of the rainbow to settle on some pasty white.  He then
stammered, "Yes, I knew all along.  I was trying to protect your
identity."

     Perel said that there was (of course) some exaggeration and
dramatic license on the part of Ms. Holland, the director.  For
instance, the police incident actually happened, but the building didn't
get hit by a bomb right when Solly stepped out.  He had to wait about
two weeks for that to happen (Perel supposes that Holland wasn't willing
to spend two weeks of film time for this).  Also, the ending was
changed.  Perel was captured by the Americans, not the Russians.  He
didn't immediately reveal he was a Jew to the American POW camp
commander, but waited a week or so (more on this later).  Certainly, the
recognition scene with Isaac didn't occur.  What did happen: virtually
every important event.  The German commander did want to adopt him; he
did run into Stalin's son (Though not necessarily as it occurred in the
film.  Perel didn't clarify.); there was an incident on the train with
the Nazi bring Solly to the Hitler Youth school (Though, Perel was quite
vague about this.); he did try to pull his foreskin forward; the German
officer did try to rape him (The actual incident was supposed to be much
more brutal than the sequence in the film, though Perel, like Solly, did
reveal his identity to him.)  He didn't mention the girl, Leni, the
Julie Delpy character, in his lecture.

     When he adopted the Joseph ("Jupp") Peters persona, according to
Perel, this Hitler Jungend identity took over, in a sense, perhaps an
illustrative example on how humanity-as-civilized and humanity-as-beast
are separated by a tissue-thin veil.  Perel *did* become Jupp the Nazi.
He was thrilled when the radio announced that the Germans had won
another victory, and was saddened when Stalingrad fell.  The reason he
didn't tell the Americans that he was Jewish was because he was sitting
in a corner of the POW camp, with his friends from the Hitler Jungend
school, heartbroken because the Germans had lost.  The experiences of
living in close quarters with the soldiers on the Eastern Front, and
then in the school, with its pageantry and the music and regimentation,
bonded him quite strongly to the people who would have killed him if
they found out he was a Jew.  He notes that tens of thousands of German
boys, many of them in their early teens, were indoctrinated into
National Socialism as he had been, enough so that they were quite
willing to die for their Fuerher in the last weeks of the war.

     There were times that his old Solly identity popped through.  When
the Germans were rounding up the Russian Jews while he was watching,
when the Hitler Jungend were singing about stabbing Jews (in this case,
Perel said he'd go up to bathroom and cry), and, finally, as a POW,
when he saw a line of concentration camp refugees filing by.  The film
brushes over how deeply Jupp had become the controlling personality.
(The scenes I recall are when he was a soldier in Russia, and the German
soldier told him to hate these people, and when the news of the
Stalingrad defeat came over the radio), and suggests that Jupp died or
vanished when Isaac showed up at the end.  Perel said that Jupp didn't
quite die.  Jupp was a Nazi, someone Perel was supposed to hate.
However, Jupp also saved his life.  Jupp moved to Israel with him.  He
said that he owned a record of Nazi victory marches (actually, a piece
by Bizet that the Nazi's appropriated), and, when he was by himself,
he'd sometimes play the album at full volume.

     According to Perel, the Jupp persona became stronger as the years
went by.  To avoid going to the insane asylum, he wrote the book that
would become EUROPA, EUROPA to start coming to some sort of
reconciliation.  He's still coming to terms with this: he's writing a
kind of dialog between Jupp and Solly right now, and hopes that it will
close the healing process.

     There are, of course, more details that I don't recall.  Hope you
found this interesting.

>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish