EUROPA EUROPA
Solomon Perel was born in Peine, Germany, in 1925, the youngest child of a Polish-Jewish shoe merchant. He survived World War II first in a Soviet orphanage (1938-41), then by posing as an Aryan at the most prestigious and elite Hitler youth school in Germany. The only giveaway sign of his Jewish identity was his circumcised penis, which he had to keep hidden at all costs. (At one point, he even made an amateurish and painful surgical attempt to “uncircumcise” himself.) After the war, he emigrated to Palestine as a Jew. At the end of Europa Europa–director Agnieszka Holland’s adaptation of Perel’s autobiography–the real Solomon Perel tells us, “When I had sons, I didn’t hesitate to circumcise them.” The film concludes by showing us Perel today, at age 65, in Israel, singing a familiar Hebrew song.
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Let’s start again with the prosaic level of the inquiry. “You won’t believe it,” the actor who plays the young Solomon Perel begins his narration, “but I remember my circumcision.” When the war is over, and Solly is miraculously reunited with his brother Isaak, the only member of his family who is still alive, Isaak tells him, “Don’t tell your story to anyone. Nobody will believe you.” What other people believe proves to be the very essence of who Solly Perel is; it even proves to be the very essence of whether he is. Perel, who has the same birthday as Adolf Hitler, has lived as a Jew for roughly 60 of his 65 years, and there’s little doubt that if he hadn’t lived as a non-Jew for those missing five years he wouldn’t be alive today. But existentially speaking, is he really a Jew? If fate made him a Jew in the first place and history made him a non-Jew in the second place, how much does his own volition matter in the third place? Is he a good Jew today in the same sense that he was a good Stalinist in Russia and a good Hitler youth in Germany?
Holland applies the same nonjudgmental stance to Solly Perel as well as to all of the Poles, Russians, and Germans he encounters over the course of Europa Europa. To varying degrees, all of these characters share a certain talent for making do with existing circumstances–which under Stalinism and Nazism entails making adaptations that may appear outlandish in hindsight. In this respect, Solly’s chameleonlike conformity is only an intensified version of everyone else’s; his impersonation of a Hitler youth, for instance, seems to differ from the impersonations carried out by many “real” Hitler youths living up to their projected ideal only in degree, not in substance. At one point, in a class on racial physiognomy, Solly is used by the teacher as a human exhibit of characteristic Aryan traits, and the teacher’s arguments are oddly persuasive. While we like to say that “seeing is believing,” this movie repeatedly demonstrates the contrary, that believing is seeing.
Solly winds up in the German army after Germany attacks Russia in June 1941 and the orphanage is bombed. Solly’s beloved teacher requisitions a truck to escape in with her students; Solly is unable to board the truck on time, and in one of the film’s most poignant details, she helplessly throws him an apple. It’s after Solly is captured by the German army that he begins his impersonation of “Josef Peters,” helped along by his excellent German and the clear desire of the German soldiers to believe him. One of these soldiers, a middle-aged former actor (Andre Wilms), even develops a crush on Solly, surprises him in his bath and makes an unsuccessful pass at him, and becomes a sympathetic confidant when Solly eventually blurts out that he’s Jewish. (He subsequently confesses his secret to his girlfriend’s mother, leading to another very touching scene.) When Solly asks the actor-turned-soldier about his former career, “Isn’t it hard playing someone else?” the older man replies, “It’s easier than playing yourself.”
