After many requests from his family to hear ‘his story in his own words’ Holocaust survivor Ivor Perl BEM has written his harrowing yet heartwarming memoir some 50 years after the terrible events of the Holocaust took place. CHICKEN SOUP UNDER THE TREE documents Ivor’s early life, his brutal internment by the Nazis at Auschwitz and looks back at a lifetime of work dedicated to keeping the stories of the Holocaust alive for future generations.
CHICKEN SOUP UNDER THE TREE will be available to pre-order from Lemon Soul Publishing from the 18th April to coincide with the commemoration of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). It also provides a pertinent first-person account of surviving the Concentration Camps ahead of the 78th anniversary of VE Day on 8th May.
The book begins as Ivor recalls happier past times. His family consisted of eleven – his father, mother, four brothers, four sisters and himself. They lived in a bungalow his parents built in Mako, with Ivor’s father working in farming. Of the eleven in the family, only Ivor and his older brother Alec survived the Holocaust.
Anti-semitism was already prominent in Eastern Europe before the outbreak of WWII but the family were naive to the horrific events which would soon follow. As laws started to be instituted against Jews, it was in the German occupation of Hungary during the middle of April 1944 that Ivor and his family would begin their journey to hell, instilling the lifelong memory of his mother shouting that they had ‘left THE CHICKEN SOUP UNDER THE TREE’, an essential foodstock for the long journey ahead of them.
In the book, Ivor recollects his struggles surviving the Nazi death camps. Transported in a cattle truck to Auschwitz, Poland, Ivor was separated from the majority of his family, except his older brother Alec. Known as number 112021, Ivor recalls the heart wrenching stories of torture, malnutrition and surviving certain death on more than one occasion with remarkable clarity.
Ivor’s journey did not end at Auschwitz, as the Germans retreated from Poland he was marched on foot over 600 km to the infamous Dachau, Germany, where he was kept through the liberation in early May 1945. Ivor’s tale turns to one of promise. He and his brother Alec were soon to relocate to England where Ivor finishes his story of rebuilding his life, finding love and starting his family, and also years later returning to his roots in Mako, Hungary.
It has taken Ivor 50 years to tell his story; even his family did not know all of the details. As one of the few remaining survivors, Ivor felt the need for his story to be shared so that future generations can understand what really happened. Over the last 20 years Ivor has given over a hundred talks to schools, football clubs and many large organisations about his experiences. In 2016, he was awarded a British Empire Medal from Queen Elizabeth II, for dedicating his life to educating others.
Ivor currently resides at Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors Centre, the only centre for Holocaust survivors in the UK. Jewish Care offers support services for survivors who were in Europe during the war, people who came to the UK on the Kindertransport as children and for those who came here as refugees afterwards.
Lemon Soul Publishing have proudly named Jewish Care as their charity partner for the book, with £1 from every book sale donated to the charity.
