Obituary: Sheindy (Sara) Perez, Holocaust survivor

On the platform at Auschwitz her grandmother Fanya squeezed Sheindy’s hand and told her that if they ask your age, say you are 18. The grandparents were sent to the gas chambers. Sheindy, Sussie and an older sister Rosie were processed. 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 a 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. A further selection took place and Sheindy, because she was small, was separated from her sisters and selected to be killed. She was then placed in a latrine with other children from the camp, but escaped by jumping out a window. Her older sister Rosie then persuaded a guard to allow Sheindy to be reunited with her siblings.

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. The girls 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 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 the girls were dispatched on a civilian Dakota aircraft to Northolt in Middlesex and on to Victoria coach station. There they were met by my father 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 my father 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 origin, 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 funds 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 uncle Martin, himself a survivor, in Israel. Sheindy was a spirted 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 Francis. 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; her grandchildren Sandor, Billie, Fani and Kate and three great-grandchildren.

Sheindy Perez: born April 28, 1928. Died December 13, 2025.