Bohancha Prokip and Yevdokia

The Ukrainian family of Bohancha lived in Katsarska Street, 32 in Kharkiv. Prokip and Yevdokia Bohancha raised their sons Viktor and Mykola. When the German-Soviet war began, Viktor went to the front. Mykola, 14-year-old, went to school and had the best grades in the class. Among his classmates was Zhanna Arshanska, a neighbor in the street, a gifted pianist, a local celebrity who had concerts in Kharkiv and other cities.

German troops captured Kharkiv, the regional center, on October 25, 1941, and on December 14 the city commandant recalled the Jews of Kharkiv. All of them were ordered to move to the barracks of the tractor and machine-tool plants by December 16. The  Jewish family of Arshanskyi was forced to live in the ghetto. At the same time, tens of thousands of people found themselves in abandoned barracks, suffering from terrible crowds, hunger and cold. The ghetto did not last long: from mid-December 1941 to early January 1942, the entire Jewish population of the city was exterminated.

On January 1, 1942, someone knocked on the door of the Bohancha’s house. Yevdokia immediately recognized Zhanna Arshanska. She was not only a classmate of her son, but also a local celebrity, because from a young age she gave concerts in Kharkiv and other cities. Yevdokia let her in the warm house. After warming up a bit, the girl said that she managed to escape from the column of Jews who were being led to their deaths. For almost a day she traveled to the city, on the way she spent the night with complete strangers, who, without asking anything, sheltered her and fed her. Returning to her home street, Zhanna first came to her closest friend, but the owners of the house did not even let her on the doorstep, begging her to leave and not to put their family in mortal danger. Then she turned to Bohancha family.

The son and husband supported the act of Yevdokia. Hoping that Zhanna’s arrival was unnoticed, they hid her in their house. It turned out, however, that the neighbors knew their secret: three days later, one of the neighbors approached Mykola Bohancha and secretly said that she knew where Frina Arshanska, Zhanna's younger sister, was now. Waiting for darkness, Prokip Bohancha went to the mentioned address and returned home with Frina.

The Arshanskyi sisters lived in the Bohancha’s house for another week. Hearing any rustling in the street, the girls hid in the cellar. However, it was clear to everyone that the neighbors knew about them and eventually the information would reach the authorities. Therefore, it was decided that the sisters should leave Kharkiv, where they were too well known. Bohancha family created the following story for them: their names were Hanna and Maryna Morozova, their father died at the front, their mother was killed during the bombing. To make the girls younger than 14 years old, Yevdokia made up  birthdays for them: she changed April 1, 1927 with December 25 for Zhanna, and  April 10, 1929 with December 20 for Frina.

Zhanna mentioned that her father's friend lived in Poltava. The train went there only from Lyubotyn, so Yevdokia asked her relative, who had a horse and cart, to take the girls to the station. Relative agreed.

The Arshanskyi sisters reached the city of Poltava and were taken to a local orphanage. There they received certificates for fictitious names, because they did not have  documents. In the attic of the orphanage, the girls found an old piano. The director of the institution heard their play and instructed to adjust the instrument immediately. Zhanna and Frina began to play for the audience, separately and together - in four hands, repeating from memory their pre-war repertoire. Soon they were given a room in the building of the Poltava Academy of Music, and later they were invited to accompany a local dance and vocal group, which performed mainly for German soldiers and officers.

During the retreat, the Germans decided to take the talented girls to the West. The fugitives met the end of the war in Austria.

Then they found themselves in the United States, where they continued their music education and started families. Zhanna Dawson and Frina Boldt became famous pianists. After the war, they had never been to Ukraine and had no contact with their rescuers. Yevdokia, Prokip and Mykola Bohancha died without knowing that the girls they had rescued had survived and their fortunes were happy. Many years later, their descendants reconnected. Greg Dawson, the son of Zhanna Arshanska, visited the Bohancha’s house twice in Kharkiv. In 2009 he described the story of the rescue of the Arshanskyi sisters in his book "Hiding in the Spotlight: the Story of the Survival of Musical Talent".

On December 5, 2007, Yad Vashem recognized Prokip and Yevdokia Bohancha as the Righteous Among the Nations."