Bobrovski Maria, Mykhailo and Mykola 

The Bobrovskyi family lived on the outskirts of Kyiv in a private house by the lake, next to a high mountain, where a cave had been dug to serve as a bomb shelter. Maria Bobrovska had three children: 16-year-old Mykola, 14-year-old Mykhailo and 6-year-old Olga.

For a year and a half, the family hid a boy who escaped at the age of 15 from Babyn Yar, where his mother and younger sister, among many other Jews, were shot dead. Ruvim Stein explored everything before leaving and persuaded his mother to stay, but she did not believe that someone would kill so many innocent and defenseless people. I realized that this was the end only when their documents were burned. Then the women were driven into cars, and the men were sent in a column to Yar. My mother and sister started breaking out and screaming, but they were still taken away. The last thing the boy heard was his mother's cry, "Run!"

"From the first steps of the path, I began to look for an opportunity to escape from the column. But how? The column was escorted by armed Nazis. When there were no more than 300 meters to Yar — screams and shots could already be heard — I slipped out of the column into a ditch, climbed into a drainpipe under the highway, and lay down. I don't know how I managed to jump into it, because I couldn't get out of there for long: I was thin, but the pipe was very narrow. I stayed in it until late at night, waiting for the convoys to stop going. I was afraid of dogs: suddenly I was taught and torn apart. But, probably, they had enough other human smells ... When the columns began to pass less often, he climbed to the opposite side of the road and went through the old cemetery and gardens to the outskirts of the city, and at night he entered his home. I did not leave the apartment for a whole week, and only after hearing that someone was trying to open the door from the outside did I go down the gutter from the second floor and run away.

And he never returned home. " From the memoirs of Ruvim Stein

Maria Bobrovska met Ruvim, a school friend of her sons, at the market, where he was trying to sell potatoes he had dug up in abandoned gardens. She took Ruvim home. For six weeks, they hid the boy in a bomb shelter from raids. Meanwhile, Mykhailo Bobrovskyi, thanks to the son of Yuriy Tanskyi, the director of school 122, received a birth certificate for a friend in the name of Volodymyr Serhiyovych Medvedenko, a Ukrainian. With this document, Ruvim received an "ausweiss" and began working at the station as a cleaner, because he did not want to put his friends in danger.

Two weeks later he left Kyiv, drove on country roads, spent the night in a warm house, if they let him warm up, then in a straw shed, then in a cold barn. Although it was strictly forbidden to hide Jews, and it was punishable by execution, but Ukrainians mostly helped: some with food, some with shoes. Many invited him to spend the winter in the village, but the boy was afraid and went on. Until one February in a blizzard, exhausted, he fell asleep in a deep snowdrift.

"I woke up in the house of the foreman of the collective farm - he found and picked me up in a blizzard, warmed me, fed me and cured me of frostbite. A week later I was walking.I began working as a heater in a local collective farm in the Bryansk region. And then I was sheltered by Agafia, the mother of four girls between the ages of two and eleven. Her husband was at the front. She taught me to plow and sow, to mow and carpenter, to cover the roof and weave shoes, to graze horses. I lived with her and helped her for about two years. And it was a time of constant anxiety for myself and for the family that hides me. " From the memoirs of Ruvim Stein

In October 1943, the young man was drafted into the Red Army. In the battles for the Baltic, he was severely wounded, captured and released in May 1945. In 1946, Ruvim was demobilized and settled with relatives in Baku, where he worked as a foundryman. In 1951 he returned to Kyiv, graduated from the Institute of Physical Culture, taught at  school № 122. He became an excellent student of public education in Ukraine, got married, raised three children and grandchildren.

"Probably, I really died there, in Babyn Yar, and what is left is a distorted shadow…" From the memoirs of Ruvim Stein

On February 6, 1992, Yad Vashem awarded Maria Bobrovska, as well as her sons Mykola and Mykhailo Bobrovskyi, the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations