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Envelope postmarked Warsaw and New York 1940 saved by a Jewish Lithuanian concentration camp survivor

Object | Accession Number: 1989.124.1

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    Overview

    Brief Narrative
    Airmail envelope received by the Jaffe family in New York, relatives of Nesse Galperin Godin. It was postmarked December 1940 and sent from Warsaw in German occupied Poland to New York. In June 1941, Siauliai, Lithuania, where Nesse lived with her closeknit family, was occupied by Nazi Germany. Nesse, her parents Pinchas and Sara, and her brothers, Yechezkel and Menashe were soon forced into the ghetto. When Nesse turned 15 in 1943, she had to report for forced labor. That November, her father was deported to Auschwitz, and gassed upon arrival. In July 1944, the ghetto was emptied. Menashe and his wife escaped and went into hiding. Nesse, Sara, and Yechezkel were sent to Stutthof concentration camp, where they were separated. Her brother was sent to Dachau and Nesse and Sara to different subcamps. Nesse, now prisoner number 54015, was transferred to four slave labor camps. In January 1945, she was transferred via death march. On March 10, she was liberated by Soviet troops. After 6 weeks in hospital, Nesse left for Łódź where she heard that her mother was alive. After searching for several weeks, they were reunited. She married Yaakov Godin, a survivor from Vilna, in August 1945. They learned that both brothers were alive. Nesse and Yaakov, with Sara, settled in Feldafing displaced persons camp. They had two children in 1947 and 1949. With the help of Sara's sister in the US, Lottie Jaffe, they arrived in America in 1950.
    Date
    postmark:  1940 December 20
    postmark:  1940 December 25
    postmark:  1940 December 26
    Geography
    postmark: San Pedro (Los Angeles, Calif.)
    postmark: New York (N.Y.)
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Nesse Godin, In memory of Pinchas Galperin
    Contributor
    Subject: Nesse G. Godin
    Biography
    Nesse Galperin was born on March 28, 1928, in Siauliai, Lithuania, to observant Jewish parents, Pinchas and Sara Bernstein Galperin. Sara was born on March 15, 1898, in Karchai, Lithuania. Her father was a farmer and she had five siblings. After attending secondary school in Jonava, Sara moved to Siauliai in 1920, where she met Pinchas, who was born June 16, 1896, in Vilnius, Lithuania (Vilna, Poland.) He was one of sixteen children of which nine lived to adulthood. His father was a typesetter for a Jewish newspaper and his mother had a small grocery store. He worked at a shoe factory. Pinchas and Sara married in 1920 and soon opened a dairy store. Nesse had two brothers, Yechezkel, born on July 21, 1921, and Menashe, born on September 11, 1923. Siauliai had a large, vibrant, closeknit Jewish community of more than 10,000 members, and over a dozen synagogues. The Galperin family attended the Landkremer synagogue.
    In September 1939, World War II began when Germany invaded Poland. In 1940, Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and on June 26, occupied Siauliai. The Germans began to systematically persecute the Jewish community. German killing units (einsatzgruppen), joined by Lithuanian police and military officials, massacred thousands of Jewish men and boys. Many were taken into the nearby Kuziai forest under the pretense of restoring areas of the city damaged by the invasion. They were shot and buried in large pits. Jewish children were prohibited from attending school, and Jewish businesses were confiscated.
    In August, Nesse and her family were forced to move into the Siauliai ghetto. All adult residents were required to work. Since Nesse was too young to work, she did not get a food ration card. Food was scarce and people depended on food smuggled into the ghetto. Nesse acted as a lookout. In 1943, when she turned fifteen, she was assigned to work. Menashe married Belle Zalinsky, a widow with a four year old, Anna, who was hidden with Lithuanian relatives. On November 5, 1943, the Germans issued conflicting work orders and everyone was afraid there would be a round-up. The Jewish police warned people that they should try to get into a labor brigade working outside the ghetto. Sara did not have a Star of David badge and Pinchas made her take his, telling her that he would not be selected for deportation, but for labor. Pinchas was deported, with a group of 1700 Jews, including 1000 children, to Auschwitz concentration camp. Nesse, her mother, and her brothers avoided the selection because they were at work outside the ghetto.
    In July 1944, as Soviet forces approached the Germans emptied the ghetto of its remaining occupants. Nesse, her mother, and Yechezkel were deported to Stutthof concentration camp in Danzig (Gdansk) in German occupied Poland. Menashe and Belle hid during the deportation. Nesse became prisoner number 54015 and was separated from her mother and brother. In the camp, Jewish women looked after Nesse, protecting her and advising her on how to survive. The women shared their food with her, wrapped her in straw to keep her warm, and held her up when the guards abused her. Nesse was transported to four other slave labor camps, including Derbeck, Malkin, and Chinow. In January 1945, she was sent on a death march with a group of 1000 female prisoners. The group was liberated by the Soviet army on March 10, 1945, while burying corpses in a labor camp in east Prussia. Only 200 women from Nesse’s group were still alive.

    Nesse spent six weeks recuperating in a makeshift hospital in Chinow (Chynowie), Poland. She was assigned a foster mother to help her. They traveled to Łódź, Poland, where Nesse met a woman from Siauliai who told her that her mother, Sara, was somewhere on the border between Germany and Poland. Nesse left the care of her foster mother to search for her. When she reached the border, she discovered that Sara, having learned that Nesse was alive, had left to find her in Łódź. After several weeks, Nesse and her mother were reunited. Sara had been sent from Stutthof to Derbeck in August, 1944, and then, in September, to Gakowa concentration camp where she was liberated by Soviet forces in January 1945. They learned that Pinchas, 47, had been murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz upon arrival. In order to begin rebuilding their lives, Sara decided that one of them must marry. Sara asked Yankel Godin, a survivor from Poland, to marry 17 year old Nesse and join their family. The couple married shortly after. In October, the combined family relocated to Feldafing displaced persons camp in Bavaria, Germany, where they were reunited with Yechezkel. They learned that Menashe had survived in the Soviet Union, but he was not permitted to leave there after the war. Nesse and Yankel had a daughter on March 1947, and a son in September 1949.

    Yechezkel left for Israel in 1948. In 1950, the Nessa, Yankel, the two children, and Sara emigrated to the United States and settled in Washington, DC. Nesse and Jack (Yankel) had a third child, a daughter. Sara, 69, passed away in 1967. Menashe immigrated to Israel in 1970. Nesse has dedicated herself to educating others about the Holocaust to honor the women who saved her life. She promised them that she would not let them be forgotten and to remember and tell the world what hatred can do.

    Physical Details

    Language
    English German
    Classification
    Information Forms
    Category
    Correspondence
    Physical Description
    Well used, small, rectangular white paper airmail envelope with a partial name and address handwritten on the front, with handwritten and stamped numbers and a rectangular white paper sticker with a red border along the bottom. The back has a triangular flap, still sealed, with a name and address handwritten at the top. There is paper censor tape across the center with preprinted text and the German Wehrmacht seal with an eagle and swastika. There are 7 postmark stamps: 2 from Germany, 1 from California, and 3 from New York. The interior has a printed blue check pattern. The front right corner has been ripped off and the left, right, and bottom edges are torn open. The paper is discolored and stained.
    Dimensions
    overall: Height: 3.750 inches (9.525 cm) | Width: 5.625 inches (14.287 cm)
    Materials
    overall : paper, ink, graphite, adhesive
    Inscription
    front, upper center, cursive, black ink : (S?)olecong
    front, center, handwritten, black ink : Herr / Sch. Joffe / 965 Hoe ave Bronx / New- York / U. S. A
    front, left, sticker, preprinted, stamped, handwritten, red, purple, and black ink : R (preprinted) Warschau C1 (stamped) / 453 (stamped) / C (handwritten)
    front, left, pencil : 453 C / 6533
    front, lower right corner, pencil : /5
    front, lower left, stamped, black ink : 451013
    back, upper center, cursive, black ink : Abs. Chaja-Liba Fabeliú(m?)e / Warschau Biala 4112
    back, lower left corner, cursive, pencil : 315 / Lexm(?)m Ave.
    back, center, preprinted on tape, black ink : Geprüft [checked]
    back, center, preprinted on tape, inside seal, black ink : Oberkommando der Wehrmacht [High Command of the Armed Forces]
    back, center and right corner, stamped, red ink : [illegible] Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
    back, left, postmark, oval stamp, black ink : NEW YORK, N.Y. / 12-25 / 1940 / REG’Y. DIV.
    back, lower left, postmark, circular stamp, purple ink : SAN PEDRO, CALIF. / DEC 20 / 1940 / REGISTERED
    back, upper right, postmark, circular stamp, purple ink : NEW YORK, N.Y. BOULEVARD STA.) / DEC 26 / 1940 / REGISTERED
    back upper right, postmark, oval stamp, black ink : NEW YORK, N.Y. / 12-25 / 1940 / REG’Y. DIV.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    No restrictions on access
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The envelope was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1989 by Nesse Godin.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-05-03 14:08:24
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn514226

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