“‘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.

From the Library With Love

Send us a text

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.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.