Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Perry was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (1937-1939) who graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1942. He briefly worked as a pediatrician in New York before joining the U.S. Medical Corps within the 174th Medical Battalion under General Patton. He became a devoted pacifist after entering Buchenwald nine days after it was liberated. The photos Dr. Perry took at Buchenwald were donated to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, along with a six-page letter he wrote to his wife, Claire, describing his feelings and impressions.

After moving from Los Angeles, where he worked with Linus Pauling, to teach at UBC’s Department of Pharmacology in Vancouver in 1962, Perry became increasingly active in the peace movement and co-edited End the Arms Race: Fund Human Needs (Soules 1987) consisting chiefly of speeches given at the Vancouver Centennial Peace and Disarmament Symposium, held from April 24 to 26, 1986 at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver.

As one of the founders of the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and a member of Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, Perry received B.C.’s Citizen Peace Award in 1990 just prior to his death at age 74 on June 7, 1991.

Editor of:

End the Arms Race-Fund Human Needs, with James Foulks (Gordon Soules Publishers, $9.95) 1987

[BCBW 2021] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit