154: Ivor Perl: Auschwitz and Dachau survivor, "I paid a terrible price for being Jewish, but how can I break the chain?"

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This is Ivor Perl, survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau.

Born Yitzchak Perlmutter, in a family of 11 in Mako, Hungary in 1932, Ivor’s youth and education was stolen from him in 1944. 

His orthodox Jewish childhood was stable enough, but there were always antisemites who slapped and pushed him about on the way to school - but it got far worse during World War II, because the Nazis began targeting Jews in Hungary. In 1944, when he was just 12, Ivor, along with his whole family, were abducted and put on a train to Auschwitz. 

Out of his family, only he and his brother Alec survived the mass murder, a fact that Ivor attributes to his brother's quick thinking and the binary luck of being placed in a line that spared him from immediate death.

After surviving Auschwitz, Ivor and his brother were taken to Dachau, where they were liberated by American soldiers in 1945. Ivor, who turned 13 during his time at Dachau, recalls marking his bar mitzvah day all alone behind barbed wire, a poignant moment in his life because as you’ll hear a religious child would have prepared what he would say on his barmitzvah day for years.

But he never got the chance.

He came to England at 13 in 1945, lucky to be alive - but as an orphan, alongside his brother Alec.

He lives in North London, but with a visceral mourning for the parents, sisters and brothers that never made it here with him.

Ivor spent many years quietly building a life for himself and his family, working in the textile industry. He didn't openly share his experiences of the Holocaust for nearly 50 years, only beginning to speak about it to help others understand the horrors of the past.

Even his transfer to England was cloak and dagger after the Nazis had been vanquished, as you’ll hear how the early Zionist pioneers wanted to take him and other children to Mandate Palestine instead. 

Forgive me if some of my questions are a little direct about his most haunted and delicate of memories - but this like other Holocaust interviews on Jonny Gould’s Jewish State is a testimony for the ages. 

It’s a privilege to have known people like Ivor, even in my own family. 

To meet and speak one-to-one with Ivor Perl has been humbling to say the least. 

Chicken Soup Under The Tree, his life memoir is available via the Lemon Soul website

Jonny Gould's Jewish State is proudly supported by Dangoor Education.

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