Sol Berger
Holocaust survivor Sol Berger: Embodying American values
Despite -- or because of -- his experiences as a Polish-born Jew, Holocaust survivor Sol Berger embodies the American experience. Berger, like virtually every American today, is part of the nation's immigrant legacy. Berger came to America seeking freedom, after fighting for freedom when he lived in Europe. Forced to hide his Jewish identity during World War II, he took on many personas, including a "Polish partisan fighter and a Russian lieutenant" (Abdollah 2009: 1).
Like so many Jewish people for centuries in Europe, Berger lived in a constant state of fear and was forced to conceal his true self and faith. His parents and two of his sisters died during the war, but he was determined to survive. He escaped on false papers under the name of Jan Jerzowski and had learned enough about Christianity from a priest he had been jailed with (when he refused to report to a work detail earlier during the war) to pretend to be a Christian. Unlike his siblings who had...
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