Europa Europa — Belarus
Solly finds refuge in Soviet-occupied Poland, joining a Communist youth organisation — but Germany's 1941 invasion reverses everything overnight as he is captured by the Wehrmacht.
After the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in September 1939, Grodno (now in Belarus) came under Soviet control. Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941 rapidly overran Soviet forces in the region. Perel was captured and survived by claiming to be an ethnic German Volksdeutsche — a deception that would define his war.