William R. Perl; Rescued Jews From Nazis
William R. Perl, the founder of the Washington, D.C., branch of the Jewish Defense League and the organizer of the smuggling of thousands of Jews out of Nazi-occupied Europe in the late 1930s and 1940s, died Thursday. He was 92.
Perl died at his home in Beltsville, Md. He had Parkinson’s disease.
Perl also was a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a psychologist, a Holocaust survivor and a champion of the right of Russian Jews to emigrate.
In addition to receiving citations from President Reagan and Congress and a number of humanitarian awards, he was honored in Israel in 1990 during the 50th reunion of passengers on a ship he chartered that carried 2,175 Jews from Romania to Palestine.
He began organizing voyages to Palestine in the 1930s after watching Hitler’s rise to power.
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