Books, Arts & Manners: The Case of the Missing Prepuce

Europa, Europa, we are told by a title card, is a true story. It’s what happened to Solomon Perel, a Jewish teenager, before and during World War II. At the end of the film, we see the real Perel, now 66, in front of a beautiful landscape in Israel, as he intones a Hebrew chant. As at the beginning, authenticity is affirmed. But the hell of it is that almost nothing about this movie, as we are watching it, rings true. Any number of avowedly fictional films come across infinitely more believable, more moving, more real.

The Perels were a German Jewish family of Polish origin living in a small German town in 1938, when, during a pogrom by Hitler Youths on the eve of Solly’s bar mitzvah, his sister Bertha was killed. The family relocated to Lodz, Poland, only to have Hitler invade a year later. The eldest son deserts from the Polish army and brings news of imminent catastrophe; the father sends the two younger brothers, Isaak and Solomon, off eastward to seek refuge among the Russians. At a crowded river crossing, they become separated and Solly ends up in a Soviet orphanage in Grodno; his parents, he later learns, have been confined to the Lodz ghetto. Forswearing his religious background, Solly becomes a good enough little Communist to be eventually admitted to the Komsomol.

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John Simon

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Europa, Europa, we are told by a title card, is a true story. It’s what happened to Solomon Perel, a Jewish teenager, before and during World War II. At the end of the film, we see the real Perel, now 66, in front of a beautiful landscape in Israel, as he intones a Hebrew chant. As at the beginning, authenticity is affirmed. But the hell of it is that almost nothing about this movie, as we are watching it, rings true. Any number of avowedly fictional films come across infinitely more believable, more moving, more real.

The Perels were a German Jewish family of Polish origin living in a small German town in 1938, when, during a pogrom by Hitler Youths on the eve of Solly’s bar mitzvah, his sister Bertha was killed. The family relocated to Lodz, Poland, only to have Hitler invade a year later. The eldest son deserts from the Polish army and brings news of imminent catastrophe; the father sends the two younger brothers, Isaak and Solomon, off eastward to seek refuge among the Russians. At a crowded river crossing, they become separated and Solly ends up in a Soviet orphanage in Grodno; his parents, he later learns, have been confined to the Lodz ghetto. Forswearing his religious background, Solly becomes a good enough little Communist to be eventually admitted to the Komsomol.