Feive Galperin / Faiva Galpernas (M / Lithuania, 1929), Holocaust survivor

Feive Galperin / Faiva Galpernas (M / Lithuania, 1929), Holocaust survivor

Shlomo Galperin (M / Lithuania, 1931), Holocaust survivor

Wolf Galperin / Ze'ev Galperin (M / Lithuania, 1927), Holocaust survivor

• One of the Kovno Boys, liberated at Gunskirchen
• KEYWORDS : <Kovno Ghetto> <Dachau> <Auschwitz> <Death March> <Mauthausen> <Death March> <Gunskirchen>

Biography

Moshe Shoham was born in Kovno on December 15, 1931. With his older brother Wolf Galperin he was one of the Kovno Boys who from Kovno were sent to Auschwitz. He was part of the group of survivors liberated at Gunskirchen.

Feive (b. Nov 26, 1929) remained with father at Dachau and also survived the war.

Kovno Stories

Faiva Galpernas was born in Kovno on November 26, 1929.

He was part of a family of seven: mother Lyuba, nee Gershovitz, father Yehezkel Galperin, an older sister Frida (now Frida Schein), then Pola (now Pola Zur), Wolf, Faiva and Shlomo.

Father was a building contractor, and mother a housewife. They were middle class and had a good standard of living. Two years before the outbreak of war they moved into their own home, which father had built on part of my grandfather Shachne Gershovitz' lot.

On the outbreak of war in Lithuania, when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in the Barbarossa Campaign (June 22, 1941), they left home, like many other Jews, and fled in the direction of Russia. All the masses wanted to escape from the Germans. They took several parcels with them, as much as they could carry, and with the refugees began to march in the direction of Vilna, which was close to the Russian border.

Frida, who was already married then, managed to make it to the border in time, with her husband's family. They reached Russia in a horse and wagon they owned. There they enlisted in the Red Army. Her husband Reuven Schein fought against the Germans on the front, and was seriously wounded in battle.

The rest of the family fled on foot. Pola hitched a ride and so she got separated. The parents were left with the three younger children. After several days on the road they reached a spot about 15 km. from Vilna, where they learned that the Germans had already reached it. they turned back, and at father's decision decided to return to Kovno.

We slept at the home of a Lithuanian peasant in return for soap and other items we had with us. He promised to take us to Kovno in his horse and wagon, also in return for various items. We set out with him on foot, walked for quite a distance and entered a forest. My father saw that the road wasn't leading anywhere and understood that the peasant's intention was to rob us and perhaps even kill us. He decided that we had to flee. We turned around and began running in the direction of the road, with the peasant chasing us. When we reached the road we saw that the German army was already moving in the direction of Kovno. We walked along the side of the road, with the Gentile following us. In the meantime we saw two German soldiers standing beside the house of one of the peasants. My father went up to them and asked them to help us get away from the Gentile who was chasing us to rob us. One of the soldiers removed his rifle from his shoulder and aimed it at the peasant with the intention of shooting him, but my father stopped him because he feared that the other peasants would harass him as the result of such an act. The German calmed down, called the Gentile over, beat him soundly and we were saved from being robbed.

When we reached Kovno, our new house was already occupied by Lithuanians. Having no choice, we settled in the meager hut beside the house, my grandfather's hut. Within a few months we were evicted from there to the ghetto that had been set up in the meantime. While we were in the ghetto my sister Pola returned from Vilna, at which time we learned that she hadn't managed to get across the border either. She had returned because we had arranged to meet with her in Vilna, and when she realized that we weren't coming, she understood that we had returned to our city.

In the ghetto several families lived in one apartment. Each family had a room, and sometimes two families shared a room, and the kitchen and bathroom were shared by all.

My father worked as a painter for the Gestapo. Because he knew how to draw, he painted pictures for the Germans and in recompense received various goods that helped us live and also survive the roundups. In order to improve the family's financial situation, my father began to produce kerchiefs. He bought sheets in exchange for food, drew the patterns and we all used to cut the patterns and paint the kerchiefs.

My sister, who looked more like a Lithuanian than a Jewish woman, used to cross the fence with the kerchiefs and sell them on the Aryan side for food. For a while, I and my two brothers worked at a carpentry school called Werkstaten.

After two years in the ghetto we were transferred to a labor camp in Šanc, near Kovno. In this camp we lived in cabins, with the women and men separate. From there we went out to work every day in the German army camps.

One day when we returned to the camp from work, it was deathly silent there (as opposed to the normal noise). When we entered we understood what the silence meant: the children's Aktion [roundup] had taken place that day, and all those in the camp were taken to their death. Thanks to the fact that we were at work, my brothers and I remained alive this time (we later learned that there had also been a children's roundup in the ghetto, and that all the children they found were also taken from there).

When the front drew closer to Lithuania at the beginning of July 1944, the Germans liquidated the Kovno ghetto and the Šanc labor camp and transferred all the Jews (including us) to freight trains that went to Germany. When our train reached Stutthof, the Germans removed the women and small children. I remained on the train with the men, because I knew that going with the women meant extermination. My sister Pola went with my mother (they went through the entire war together and helped each other survive).

The train continued on to Germany with the men and the remaining boys, and after a certain amount of time we reached Landsberg camp. We all got off. We remained at this camp for several weeks.

One day all the children in the camp, 130 in number, including Shlomo, were gathered together, to be sent somewhere. My father didn't want Shlomo, the little one, to be alone, and asked me, Faive to join him, so that they would be together. I cried and didn't want to leave my father, and then my older brother Wolf, who was 17 years old, volunteered to join Shlomo instead of me, even though he knew we were sentenced to death.

The entire family survived the war. They reunited after the war, except Shlom (who had gone to Israel with the Jewish Brigade).