Eva Perlman

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Eva Perlman was born Eva Hanna Gutmann on 18 May 1932 in Berlin, Germany. Her father, Rodolphe, was a patent attorney, and her mother, Charlotte, was studying medicine. After Hitler came to power in 1933, persecution destroyed their professional prospects. A French colleague offered her father work in Paris, enabling the family to escape Germany while Eva was still a baby.

Their refuge became dangerous when Germany invaded France in 1940. The family moved repeatedly, eventually reaching the Lyon area. In 1942, Eva and her two younger brothers were sheltered at Clairefontaine, a Catholic residential school in Autrans, a mountain village near Grenoble. Its directors, Georgette and Joseph Menthonnex, protected their Jewish identities and were later recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

Her parents subsequently rented an apartment in Autrans, where the family lived with false papers. In the summer of 1944, her father left to join the French Resistance. German troops entered the village, and an officer and his orderly requisitioned a room in the house where Eva, her mother and brothers were staying. For approximately two weeks, the Jewish family lived alongside them without being discovered. Charlotte concealed her fluent German and kept watch at night, fearing that her husband might return unaware of the danger.

The family survived and returned to the Lyon area after its liberation in 1944. Eva later trained as a nurse in Paris and married American anthropologist Mel Perlman in 1956. They raised three children while living in Britain, Uganda, the United States and Canada. After her husband’s death, she eventually settled in Los Angeles.