IN 1964, on the occasion of his 50th birthday, Icek Perel hosted two parties. The first, held on a Friday, was populated by friends from the neighborhood: working-class Belgians with whom he had formed a joyous, if circumstantial, alliance. Over beer, they told jokes in Flemish; his guests, who were also customers at the clothing shop he ran beneath his apartment, hardly knew he and his family were Jewish. The second party, held the next day, mimicked the first but was revived with a few crucial twists: The guests were all fellow Holocaust survivors, the punch lines were delivered in Yiddish, and the beer had been swapped out for vodka.
Icek and his wife, Sala, were the sole survivors of their respective families and met on the road to liberation…