Otto Perl poses with his American army unit at Camp Ritchie, Maryland.

Otto Perl poses with his American army unit at Camp Ritchie, Maryland.

Willard Luther Richardson has been tentatively identified in the back row, far right.

Otto Perl was born in Vienna on September 22, 1915. He was the son of Martha Knopfmacher and Leopold Perl, a Viennese businessman. Otto had one brother, Kurt (b. 1917). During the year preceeding the Anschluss, Otto was serving in the Austrian Army. After his dismissal in March 1938 for being a Jew, Otto was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau. On September 22 he was transferred to Buchenwald, where he remained until his release on March 15, 1939. He then returned to Vienna. With the help of a friend who had emigrated to the US in 1933, Otto was able to get an American visa. He left Austria in June 1939 but was waylaid for nine months in a refugee camp in Ramsgate, England, before reaching New York in March 1940. Otto's mother committed suicide in 1941 or 1942. His father was arrested in Vienna in 1942 and died of a heart attack while on his way to the deportation trains. Otto's younger brother escaped to Italy and from there made his way to Columbia. Later, he was able to join Otto in the United States.