Nesse Godin
Nesse Galperin was born on March 28, 1928, into an observant Jewish family in Siauliai, Lithuania. Her mother, Sara, owned a dairy store and her father, Pinchas, worked at a shoe factory. They spoke often to Nesse and her brothers, Jecheskel and Menashe, about the importance of community and caring for others. Siauliai was home to a Jewish community of more than 10,000 members, who supported cultural and social organizations and over a dozen synagogues.
The Russians took over Siauliai in 1940, and the forbid the Jews from studying Hebrew. In school Jewish students were required to learn English and Russian. One year later, the Nazis took over and everything changed. As Nesse and her family heard Nazis entering the town, Sara remembered instructions from World War I that the safest place to be was the basement. So, Nesse and her family stayed in the basement that night and then for half of the next day. When they learned that the German army was not shooting in Siauliai, they were instead marching through Siauliai to get to the Soviet Union, Nesse and her family went back into their house. There was a sense of relief that the Nazis did not stop for the Jews of Siauliai. But this sense of relief was a mistake. Two days later, another group marched into Siauliai. They were called Einsatzgruppen – mobile killing squads.
In the weeks that followed, the Einsatzgruppen and Lithuanian police and military officials rounded up 1,000 Jewish men and boys and took them to the nearby Kuziai Forest, where they forced them to dig large pits before telling them to take off their clothes. They then shot the men and boys and buried their bodies in the pits. Luckily, Nesse’s father and brother were not part of this group because they worked in a shoe factory during the day. The factory was left alone because the Nazis wanted boots.
In August 1941, Nesse, at only 13 years old, and her family were moved into the Siauliai ghetto. During the day when Nesse was home alone, her father had her hide behind a cabinet so she would not be deported to a camp. It was clear the having a job was safer than being home where she could be picked for selection, so Nesse’s father got her a job at the hospital laying wood into the oven for heating.
On November 5, 1943, approximately 1,700 people—including Nesse's father, Pinchas, and 1,000 children--were deported to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chambers. Her father happened to be home that day because it was his day off from work. Nesse, her mother, and her brothers managed to avoid the selection because they were at work. In 1944, the few Jews remaining in the Siauliai ghetto were deported to the Stutthof concentration camp. Nesse became prisoner number 54015 and was separated from her mother and brother Jecheskel. Her other brother, Menashe, evaded deportation with the help of a gentile friend.
In the camp, Jewish women looked after Nesse, protecting her and advising her on how to survive. She was deported to four other slave labor camps and then, in January 1945, she was sent on a death march in a group of 1,000 female prisoners. When the Soviet army liberated the group on March 10, 1945, only 200 women, including Nesse, were still alive.
Nesse spent six weeks recuperating in a makeshift hospital in Chinow (Chynowie), Poland, and was then assigned a foster mother to help her. They traveled to Lodz, 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 own mother. By the time she reached the border, Sara—having learned that Nesse was alive—had left to find her in Lodz.
After weeks of traveling and searching, Nesse and her mother were reunited. In order to begin rebuilding their lives, Sara decided that either she or Nesse would need to marry. Nesse was 17 when Sara asked Yankel Godin, a survivor from Poland, to marry her daughter and join their family. Nesse and Yankel were married shortly after. The Galperin/Godins relocated to the Feldafing displaced persons camp in Bavaria, where they were reunited with Jecheskel. Many years later, in 1970, Menashe immigrated to Israel.
In 1950, the Galperin/Godins immigrated to the United States and settled in Washington, DC. Nesse and Jack (Yankel) z”l had three children, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. In honor of the women who saved her life, Nesse was a passionate advocate for Holocaust education and awareness and served as a volunteer at the US Holocaust Museum since before it opened in 1993. She passed away on March 4, 2024, just a few weeks before her 96th birthday.