William R. Perl

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William R. Perl (* 1906 in Prague , Austria-Hungary , † December 1, 1998 in Beltsville (Maryland) ) was an Austrian-American businessman, officer in the US Army , psychologist , Jewish-Zionist activist.

Life

The son of a textile merchant studied law and international business at the University of Vienna and practiced as a lawyer in Vienna.

In the 1930s he was active in the militant revisionist-Zionist movement of Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky . A year before the annexation of Austria (1938) he began organizing a rescue operation for Jews to Palestine . According to his estimates, he evacuated over 40,000 Jews from Romania , Greece , Yugoslavia and other southern European countries in run-down freighters and sailing boats. His cousin Franz Gross was his liaison in Prague.

The as yet unknown Untersturmführer Adolf Eichmann , who, with the help of a pistol in his back, had asked him about the whereabouts of a fugitive Jew, he tried in vain to interest him in his rescue plan for Viennese Jews. Eichmann said, however, that the Jews would be atomized and that Israel did not want a “criminal center”. Perl then traveled to Berlin with Mosche Krivoshein (Galili), where they posed at the Ministry of Finance as the official representative of an action aimed at “de-Judging” Vienna. They received a foreign exchange instruction to the Vienna National Bank for the exchange of German marks for British pounds in order to be able to buy ships and bribe Greek seamen. Af-Al-Pi ( despite everything ) was the code name of the action. Since there were hardly any passengers for the first trip in Vienna, Eastern European Betar members first had to be recruited. Perl later found the most painful part of his job to choose the healthiest evacuates for the limited number of places.

In 1940 Perl was arrested in Greece. As he believed, it was the British who sent him to Berlin on a train. With a cut wrist he was able to fake suicide shortly before the Yugoslav border and was sent back, whereby he managed to escape. He escaped through Portugal to Mozambique , where he received a visa for the United States in 1941. Until August 1944, his organization was able to carry out some sea rescue operations.

Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he joined the US Army and served in Europe as a lieutenant colonel in Army Intelligence. After the surrender, he moved to the war crimes tribunal. The Allies needed a large number of German speakers for the interrogations and resorted to Jewish refugees. Perl became chief interrogator of SS men at the Malmedy trial under Burton F. Ellis . With Raphael Shumacker, Robert E. Byrne, Morris Ellowitz, Harry Thon and Joseph Kirschbaum, he was later criticized for torture during interrogation.

His wife Lore, b. Rollig from Vienna (March 15, 1913, † January 15, 2010 in Beltsville), who had secretly converted from Roman Catholicism to Judaism shortly before their wedding in April 1938, was for the attempt to hide a Jewish neighbor in 1942–1944 Imprisoned at Ravensbrück concentration camp . The couple had two sons. At the end of the war they were reunited in Vienna.

After the war, William earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University and then served in the US Army in Munich as a psychological advisor to soldiers. After retiring from the military in 1958, he became a psychologist at the Social Welfare Office in the District of Columbia , taught at George Washington University and had a private practice.

He became an official of the militant Jewish Defense League in Washington, DC

In the early 1970s, Perl organized protests against the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union . These activities led to his arrest and conviction by a federal court in November 1976.

His widow bequeathed his correspondence to the Gelman Library at George Washington University.

literature

  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 553

Publications

  • Visit to Vienna: A letter from Lt. William R. Perl ; In: Aufbau , Volume 11, 1945, No. 31 (August 3, 1945)
  • The Four-front War: From the Holocaust to the Promised Land ; 1979
  • Operation Action: Rescue from the Holocaust . F. Ungar Publishing Company, New York 1983.
  • The Holocaust Conspiracy: An International Policy of Genocide . Shapolsky Publishers, New York 1989.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MN Penkower: The Jews Were Expendable ; P. 36
  2. ↑ displacement and a new beginning ; P. 267
  3. ↑ https://germanic.osu.edu/associate-professor-emerita-ilsedore-maria-edse
personal data
SURNAME Perl, William R.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American businessman, officer in the US Army, psychologist, Jewish-Zionist activist
DATE OF BIRTH 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1998
Place of death Beltsville, Maryland