July 06, 2024

“‘Forget that number and you don’t exist,’ the Kapo at Auschwitz told me.” 92-year-old Ivor Perl on surviving the horrors of the Holocaust.

52 minutes

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Ivor was just 12 years old when he was taken to Auschwitz. He survived with the help of his older brother, but the rest of his family were murdered in the Holocaust.

He was brought to England in November 1945 as one of a group of orphans, and started forging a new life. Ivor built a successful clothes manufacturing company; married and had four children (and now six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren). For half a century, the past stayed in the past – until it could be contained no longer.

Eventually, he started to open up – describing the luck, hope, belief and love that have helped him to live and he wrote his own book, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chicken-Soup-Under-Tree-Journey/dp/1999378156

I visited Ivor in his London home and found a warm, curious and intelligent man. But the past is always there as he explains in this open and honest discussion.

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