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

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

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

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

• Leader of the 131 Kovno Boys. Separated from the rest of the group at Auschwitz.

• KEYWORDS : <Kovno Ghetto> <Deportees> <Dachau> <Auschwitz>

USHMM Oral Interview

Ze’ev Galperin, born in Kaunus, Lithuania in 1927, describes being one of five children; his very close family; attending Jewish schools; his bar mitzvah; the Soviet occupation; transfer to a public school; German invasion; briefly fleeing east with his parents and brothers (one sister fled to Russia, another to Vilnius); finding their home occupied upon their return; moving to his grandfather's home (his grandfather had been killed); a non-Jewish neighbor bringing them food; moving to the ghetto in Slobodka; his sister's return from Vilnius; his father's privileged position as a painter; working with his father; receiving assistance from German soldiers; an “action” and how people were taken to Fort Nine; songs and jokes from the ghetto; sabotaging the machinery in the factory where he worked; transferring to Šanciai with his family (Kauen-Schanzen concentration camp); being deported to Stutthof one year later; separation from his mother and sister; being transferred to Dachau; his youngest brother's selection with a group of 130 children and deciding to join him; the refusal of the children to be gassed and the German relenting and returning them to a barrack; teaching the children to line up for roll call; being transferred with the children to Auschwitz/Birkenau; his illness and the outbreak of scarlet fever; separation from the children; his transfer to Lieberose, then Sachsenhausen; a German prisoner convincing the officers that Ze'ev was not Jewish; calling himself Vitas Chemalsky so that people would not think he was a Jew; his assignment working with prisoners of war; transfer to a steel mill; Allied bombings destroying the facility, thus saving him from discovery as a Jew; returning to Sachsenhausen; a death march towards Hamburg, Germany; being rescued by the Red Army in a forest near Schwerin, Germany (Skwierzyna, Poland); receiving assistance from the Red Cross; returning home; learning his family was in Vilnius and joining them; learning his youngest brother was in Israel (he thought he was dead); becoming an engineer despite anti-Jewish restrictions; his marriage in 1955; the births of his two children; immigrating to Israel to join the rest of his family (his brother remained in Vilnius); and having reunions with the surviving children he was with in Auschwitz/Birkenau. He also sings ghetto songs and shows photographs.

B'nai B'rith International (25 January 2017)

Risked His Life In An Attempt To Rescue 130 Children

​The B’nai B’rith World Center and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust (JRJ) this week will jointly honor concentration camp survivor Wolf "Ze'ev" Galperin for his valor and sacrifice.

The two organizations will present their Jewish Rescuers Citation on Thursday, Jan. 26 (the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day) to Galperin, 89, a native of Kovna, Lithuania now living in Sderot, Israel.

The event will be held in cooperation with the Sderot municipality in the presence of Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi and local youth groups at the city’s main cultural center.

Although he was only 17 years old, Wolf Galperin made the decision to support and safeguard, to the best of his ability, a group of 130 Jewish children from his hometown of Kovna, Lithuania between the ages of seven and 14, including his younger brother. The children were some of the last Jews who were captured by the Nazis prior to the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944.

The women, men and children were taken to and separated at Stutthof, a concentration camp in Sztutowo, Poland. The men and children continued on their journey to the Landsberg concentration camp, where 130 of the youngest children were segregated in a barbed wire holding area, presumably to await their deaths. Galperin, who was not among them, crawled under the barbed wire to be with his brother.

A day later Galperin and the children were taken to Dachau, and in an effort to maintain their morale, Galperin worked to divert the children’s attention from the barbarity surrounding them. Recognizing that the Nazis valued order and obedience, he taught the children to march in formation.

On July 31, 1944, the children were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with Galperin, and once again they began to march. It is generally believed by the survivors that their orderly behavior among the chaos, grief and hysteria that was the norm, was what drew the Germans to allow the group into the camp and to be assigned for work detail. The children were tattooed with sequential numbers B-2774 to B-2902. (129)

During the High Holidays in 1944, 90 members of the original group were removed from the camp and never seen again. Galperin himself was also taken away, surviving in forced labor and death marches until he was liberated on May 2, 1945. Of the 40 survivors from the initial group of children, 28, including Galperin, made their way to Israel.

The Jewish Rescuers citation was established in 2011 by the B’nai B’rith World Center and JRJ to rectify the historical record regarding Jewish rescue. To date, some 150 rescuers who operated in France, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Poland, the Netherlands and now Lithuania, have been recognized.