A Lithuanian-Jewish couple poses in the park with their three children.
Overview
- Caption
- A Lithuanian-Jewish couple poses in the park with their three children.
Pictured are Sara, Nesse, Menashe, Yechezkel and Pinchas Galperin. - Date
-
1929 July 07
- Locale
- Siauliai, Lithuania
- Variant Locale
- Schaulen
Schavli
Shaulyai
Shaulyay
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
USHMM (Restricted)
Copyright: Exclusively with provenanceProvenance: Nesse Godin - Restriction
- NOT FOR RELEASE without the permission of Nesse Godin
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Nesse Godin (born Nesa Galperin) is the daughter of Pinchas and Sara Bernstein Galperin. Pinchas was born in Vilna on June 16, 1896. He was one of 16 children, of whom nine lived to adulthood. His father worked as a typesetter for a Jewish newspaper, and his mother ran a small grocery store. Sara Bernstein was born on March 15, 1898 in Karchai, Lithuania. She was one of six children, and her father was a farmer. Sara attended secondary school in Jonava, and in 1920 she moved to Siauliai, where she met and married Pinchas Galperin. The Galperins sold dairy goods and had three children. Yechezkel was born on July 21, 1921 and Menashe was born on September 11, 1923. Nesa was born on March 28, 1928. The family was close-knit and religious. With the start of World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union divided up Poland. Lithuania remained independent during the first year of the war but was annexed by the USSR in the summer of 1940. One year later, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Siauliai fell under Nazi occupation on June 26, 1941. Almost immediately, Germans along with Lithuanian collaborators massacred several thousand Jews from Siauliai, primarily in the Kuziai forest. The remaining 5000 Jews were forced into ghettos later that summer. The Galperin family lived together in the ghetto for the next two years. In 1943 Menashe married Bella Zelinsky, a young widow with a four-year-old daughter, Anna. Menashe and Bella hid the girl with Lithuanian relatives, while they remained in the ghetto. On November 5, 1943, the Nazis issued conflicting orders on reporting to work, and the Jewish community feared an impending round-up. The Jewish police warned it would be safer to join a work brigade that day. Sara was not assigned to a brigade, and Pinchas had the day off. He therefore gave his Jewish star to his wife so that she could join a brigade at a nearby factory. He assured her that as a strong, able-bodied man he would be safe. Sara returned from work at the end of the day to discover that Pinchas had been rounded-up along with children and the elderly. She later learned he had been deported to Auschwitz and gassed on arrival. In July 1944, the Germans liquidated the Siauliai ghetto and deported all its surviving residents to concentration camps in Germany. Menashe and Bella escaped from the deportation convoys; Menashe hid in a drum in the leather factory where they had been working. However, to protect Anna's true identity, they did not contact her until after liberation. Nesa, Yechezkel and their mother, Sara, were sent by train to Stutthof where they were separated from each other. Yechezkel was sent to Dachau, and Nesa and her mother were sent to different sub-camps. Each assumed the other had been killed upon arrival. Nesa was sent on a death march in January 1945 and liberated by the Soviet army, on March 10, 1945. She spent about six weeks recuperating in a small hospital where she was assigned a foster-mother only a few years older than herself. Together they went to Lodz where many survivors were gathering. After registering with the Jewish community, Nesa met another survivor from Siauliai who told her that her mother was alive. Nesa bid farewell to her foster-mother and eventually found Sara. She also met Yaakov (Jack) Godin, a survivor from Vilna. They married in a secular service in August 1945. Nesa soon learned that Yechezkel had also survived and was working with the Bricha. She, Jack and Sara decided to come to the American zone of Germany to reunite with him. They traveled to Berlin and eventually settled in the Feldafing displaced persons camp. Nesa and Jack had a second, religious wedding on May 2, 1946, and their first child, Pnina, named after Nesa's father, was born the following year on March 27, 1947. A second child Eber Issac (Eddie) was born on September 23, 1949. While in Feldafing, Sara corresponded with her sister, Lottie Jaffe who had come to America the same year Nesa was born. Lottie and her husband Saul arranged to sponsor immigration papers, and Nesa, Jack and Pnina immigrated to the United States in 1950. Nesa and Jack's third child, Rochelle, was born in Washington D.C. on June 27, 1954. Yehezkel and his wife Lena immigrated to Israel. Menashe and his family, however, were prohibited from leaving the Soviet Union. The Soviets arrested Menashe for being a Zionist, and he was imprisoned for nine years in Siberia. He and his family finally received permission to leave the Soviet Union in 1970, three years after his mother's death. His daughter's rescuers, Ona Janushauskene and Vincas Janushauskas, were honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
- Record last modified:
- 2024-03-06 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1157839
