OBITUARY: Sheindy Perez, Auschwitz and Belsen survivor, who built a new life in Brighton

Sheindy (Sara) Perez, a survivor of Auschwitz and Belsen, who forged a successful business career in the Brighton area, has died in Sussex at 97-years old. She was born in the town of Tiszaújlak (Vylok) on April 28, 1928, in trans-Carpathia on the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border (now in Ukraine) to Ida (née Brummer) and Solomon Mermelstein. Her father died before Sheindy was born. Her mother Ida went into domestic service, before eventually travelling to England to keep house for her older brother Cantor Philip (Hillel) Brummer.

Sheindy was brought up by her maternal grandparents, Fanya and Sandor (Brummer). Fanya bore a new daughter, Sussie, six weeks after Sheindy’s birth, and the two girls were treated as sisters. At home the parents mostly spoke Yiddish, but the younger generation were fluent Hungarian speakers. The family lived frugally but the farming background and small dairy herd meant there was no shortage of food and good cheer. On Sabbath afternoons, Sandor would sit under a peach tree and read the younger children stories from the bible. On warm days they would bathe in the nearby Tisza River.

In 1938 life changed for the Jews of the area when it fell under the control of a fascist Hungarian administration, allies of the Nazis. Restrictions were imposed on movements and Sheindy’s two older uncles, Joseph and Danile, living and working in nearby Berehove, were carted off to workcamps in the forests by the Hungarian Fascist Arrow Cross. Letters and clothing parcels were sent, but after 1941 no more was heard from them.

The dairy and supply of milk to local Czech and Hungarian schools provided the main income for the Brummer family. Increasingly they became dependent on money sent from relatives who had escaped overseas. In 1944, Hitler lieutenant Adolf Eichmann set out on his mission to rid Hungary of its Jewish population. The deportation of Vylok’s Jews, supervised by local Hungarian militias and uniformed Nazis, began. Sara and her effective siblings and grandparents were locked inside the local synagogue for two days. They were then transferred to the Vinograd ghetto. After a short time, they were loaded onto cattle cars for the onward journey to Auschwitz.

On the platform at Auschwitz, her grandmother Fanya squeezed Sheindy’s hand and told her that if they ask your age, say you are sixteen. The grandparents were sent to the gas chambers. Sheindy, Sussie and an older sister Rosie were processed into the camp itself. Their hair shaved, they were provided with flimsy frocks (no underwear) and spent the first night huddled together in the stinking toilet barracks.

Just days after their arrival, they were shipped off to Kivoli in Estonia to work in factory producing iron rods for building works. They were fed watery soup with maggots floating on the surface. As the Russian army advanced on Estonia, they were moved to Tallin, loaded onto barges to Danzig manned by the SS. From there they were moved to Stutthof concentration camp. A further selection took place and Sheindy, because she was small, was separated from her sisters, and placed with other children. Her old sister Rosie arranged, with the help of a sympathetic guard, for her to be reunited with her siblings by escaping through a latrine window.

From there they were all shipped to another camp, Oxensoll, where they were put to work on lathes. Malnourished, bald and bedraggled, they were on the move again. this time a three-day rail journey to Bergen Belsen. There were greeted by a band, dressed in black and white, playing classical music. But once inside the camp they found themselves surrounded by skeletal people and rotting bodies piled high. At Belsen, the Brummer girls were recognised by a woman from their hometown suffering from typhus. She gave them cleaning fluid, to help protect them from disease, and soup.

The sound of gunfire was all around as allied troops advanced. Sheindy and her sisters were put on a train to Copenhagen by Wehrmacht soldiers. The end of a nightmare fight for survival was in sight under the auspices of the Swedish Red Cross. After being cared for by young doctors and quarantined, they were transferred to the city of Malmo. Sheindy would describe the time in Sweden, when they were well fed, given ice cream and looked after – and learned to ski – as some of the best days of her life.

In Sweden they informed the Red Cross that they had family in Brighton, England living at 66 Middle Street. This was the mews behind the landmark synagogue where their uncle Philip was the Chazan. A telegram was dispatched, and the first thrilling news of survival reached the Brighton Brummer family.

Sheindy and her sisters were dispatched on a civilian Dakota aircraft to RAF Northolt in Middlesex, and then onto Victoria coach station. There they were met by their cousin Michael. He had escaped to England via Palestine and had made a brief visit to Vylok at the outbreak of war.

Safely living in Britain, Sheindy worked with Michael, who farmed in Sussex, and had established a Kosher poultry and farm produce shop in Brighton. It was there that she was introduced to a dashing young Sephardi man, of Spanish and Portuguese origins, Maurice Perez. The couple were married in the historic Middle-Street synagogue. Together they set up in business on their own.

Starting with a modest butcher shop on Farm Road in Hove, they developed a wholesale meat business. The enterprise flourished and before long pioneered a profitable export business with Bermuda. The profits made were invested in rental properties in Hove.

Two daughters were born to the couple, before the marriage failed. But the businesses flourished. Sheindy bought a boat harboured at Newhaven and became an enthusiast. She regularly sailed to Normandy ports and bought a French house and carefully decorated it with local antiques. She travelled widely, reuniting with family who had left Hungary for New York at the turn of the century, her grandmother’s family in Detroit and Florida and her brother Martin, himself a survivor, in Israel.

Sheindy was a spirited person who enjoyed the opera season at Glyndebourne. She was gregarious and devoted her later years to visiting schools in the Brighton area, recounting her experiences of the Shoah and a miraculous survival. In her 90s, she would receive requests from teachers asking if they could bring small groups of children to visit as part of their Holocaust education. She willingly obliged.

Sheindy’s last years were overshadowed by the death of her younger daughter Frances. Relations with her birth Mother Ida, who also lived in Brighton, were strained. Nevertheless, Sheindy ensured she lived out her days in a comfortable seafront apartment and was well looked after.

The final months for Sheindy were spent at the Red Oaks care home at Henfield in East Sussex. She is survived by her ‘sister’ Sussie who shared most of her Shoah narrative; her daughter Rowena Daniels; her grandchildren Sandor, Billie, Fani and Kate, and three great-grandchildren.