William Perl's Book Report

William R. Perl was chosen as our subject because of his direct correlation to the theme and the abundance of information that we had available. To begin the selection process, each group member listed their possible ideas. Then we discussed each one and decided on Perl. One of our group-members is the grandchild of Perl, so she had primary sources and knew a lot of information about the subject before we began researching. As we researched, we began to develop opinions and ideas, and decided on a thesis that Perl’s rescues, although illegal, were justified by the high death rate of the holocaust, the psychological damage, and the lack of space granted to Jews.
Three of us read books written by Perl, and the other two read books about other Zionists at the time, or other rescue attempts from the Holocaust. We were able to look at primary source documents such as his passport marked with a J, which is included in our exhibit. Overall, we relied on information from his books as well as the other books we read. When choosing books, we wanted to have other opinions available, so we read books by David Ben-Gurion, who had opposing views on how to rescue Jews from the Holocaust and wanted to go about everything in a completely
Many Jews at the time wanted to go about things in a legal manner, but Perl saw the speed of events happening, and acted against the establishment to get people out of their countries before a legal decision was made. He also took a stand against the Nazi’s, opposing their power over the Jews by not allowing them to take and kill Jews without a fight. Perl had a large impact on 40,000 thousand lives, through giving them the opportunity to survive a dangerous time. In history, Perl impacted the death rates of the Holocaust, and the success of Adolf’s campaign. Perl’s stand against the Nazi’s and the Jewish establishment was significant to many and to history