Manya Frydman Perel

You can easily download and print Manya's biography here (pdf)

Manya Perel's reaction to the June 10, 2009 shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (from myfoxphilly.com).

Manya Perel reunited with Chester Vacca, a Merchant Marine Sailor who helped rescue her (from northeasttimes.com).

"For six years during World War II, when Hitler and the Nazis came to power, I had no life. I was born in Radom, Poland. At first in the ghetto and later in eight concentration camps, I suffered humiliation, torture, and hunger just because I was born a Jew. I lost my parents and most of my family; but was my destiny to survive the greatest catastrophe, the Holocaust. Despite the horrible conditions, I was not selfish. I risked my life to save others.

I hope that my life will be an example for others not to take life for granted, not to be prejudiced towards others, and to respect one another. After all we only have one life to live. My prayers go out to all mankind for a world at peace, a world that will not forget, so that such a tragedy will not repeat itself. Since the war, I have dedicated my life to bearing witness to young and old. I managed to get married and have good children and grandchildren, of whom I am very proud. They have promised to take over my task and to carry on my legacy from generation to generation.

On May 1, 1945, I was liberated by the Russian forces from this Hell on earth."






Holocaust survivor and Philadelphian Manya Frydman Perel was born in 1924 in Radom, Poland. She was one of ten children. As a child, she helped her parents in the family bakery. In 1939, after the Nazi Invasion, her family was forced into a ghetto, where she nearly starved and witnessed routine killings. She lost her parents, four brothers, and a sister when the Nazis sent them by train to a death camp. They died in a gas chamber and were cremated.

Perel then spent the next 7 years in different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Plaszow (the camp in Schindler’s List, run by the infamous Amon Goeth), Ravensbrück, Rechlin, and Gundelsdorf. At these camps, she performed hard labor, including carrying telephone poles and large spools of electrical wire.

In 1945, during a death march, in which the Nazi SS soldiers herded her and other inmates away from the advancing Soviet troops, the exhausted and starving Perel knew she could not walk much further, so she took an opportunity to flee into the woods. During the next three days, she hid in the woods as the Soviet army bombed German positions close by. Russian soldiers later rescued her.

Once liberated, Perel was amazed to learn that her four sisters and one brother had also survived the war. Her four surviving sisters also spent the war in concentration camps performing hard labor. Manya Perel's remaining brother had fled to Argentina previously. In July 1945, she and other camp survivors were taken to a displaced-persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany. It was at that camp that Perel was reunited with her surviving sisters. She used her time in the camp to recuperate, while waiting for her turn to travel to North America. Today, Manya Perel donates her time telling school groups about the
atrocities she experienced and witnessed during the Holocaust.