Europa, Europa

With his mother's parting words ringing in his ears, fourteen-year-old Solomon Perel set out from Nazi-occupied Poland hoping to find safety across the new Soviet frontier. Like large numbers of other Jews fleeing the Germans, Perel faced staggering odds against his survival. What actually transpired was far different from what anyone could have imagined. By a startling twist of fate, the young Jew found unexpected refuge ... as a student in an elite Hitler Youth school. Now this extraordinary and true story appears in English translation for the first time. With searing power and passion, Europa, Europa recounts Solomon Perel's harrowing struggle living a nightmare from which there seemed no escape. By the time Solly, as he was called by his family, left Poland that night in 1939, he was already an experienced refugee. Sensing the oncoming Nazi terror, his family had fled Germany several years before. This time, however, the family could not stay together and the youngster would soon be on his own. Reaching the Soviet shore after a dramatic river crossing, Perel was placed in a Russian orphanage, where he was accepted into the Komsomol, the Communist organization for young people.