Holocaust survivor: See others as people

Nesse Godin’s story of surviving the Holocaust has become a fixture at American Legion Boys Nation.

Each year’s class of delegates, though, is still moved by the story that Godin shares: how the Nazis occupied her hometown of Siauliai, Lithuania, in June 1941, when she was 13. How her family was split up, with her father deported to his death at Auschwitz, the rest of the family separated from each other at Stutthof. How she was able to find her mother and her brothers after the war.

After telling her story to this year’s Boys Nation on Thursday night, one of the questions she was asked by the delegates was what kept her going when she was separated from her family.

“Those women who picked me up,” she said, referring to the older women around her who lifted her spirits when 16-year-old Nesse Galperin just wanted to die.

“Hitler wants you dead; you can’t die,” they told her. “Don’t let us be forgotten. You must live so that we are not forgotten.”

It’s that message that Godin, now 88, wants the young people who hear her story to remember. It’s why she speaks to other groups as well, and why she shares her message through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

She also urged the Boys Nation delegates to look past the surface differences between people.

“Don’t see a religion,” she said. “See a human being.”