Klara Galperina lived in Minsk with her stepmother Esfir and her three siblings Maya, Vladimir, and Nelli. The city was occupied by German troops in 1941 and the occupiers immediately began persecuting Jews. While Maya and Vladimir could be hidden outside the city, 14-year-old Klara had to move into the Minsk ghetto with her stepmother and her four-year-old half-sister Nelli in July 1941. Her stepmother managed to obtain forged identity papers for both children. They were taken out of the ghetto in secret and lived under false names with their former neighbors Anna and Venyamin Khachevski.
The neighbors’ daughter Svetlana Khachevskaya was active in a resistance group. In early 1943 she was arrested by the German security police and murdered. Anna and Venyamin Khachevski and Nelli Galperina were arrested shortly after. Klara Galperina was not in the apartment but was also arrested on her return. Klara Galperina and Venyamin Khachevski were publicly hanged in April 1943. Anna Khachevskaya was taken to the German Reich to perform forced labor. Maya, Nelli, and Vladimir Galperin survived the war.