Bychenko Raisa, Ionesko Anton

Raisa Bychenko and her husband Anton Ionesko lived in Odesa. Their neighbors were the Jewish Kremer family. Sara Kremer and five-year-old Andrik settled in the city in 1939 after fleeing from Poland. However, with the arrival of the Nazis, Jews of Odesa also began to be persecuted. When they began to be driven to the ghetto, the woman and her son asked for shelter from their neighbors. Raisa and Anton agreed to hide them.

Anton was engaged in underground work, so he used connections in the local administration and obtained documents with Polish names for his wards. This allowed Sara to move freely around the city. Soon the occupiers stopped her on the street for inspection, suspecting that she was Jewish. Sarah Kremer was shot in August 1942. Raisa and her husband tried to find out about Andrik's fate. A few months later, they managed to get the boy out of prison by bribing a guard. The boy lived with his saviors until the end of the occupation of Odesa.

Anton Ionesco did not live to see the Nazis expelled for several weeks. During the fulfillment of another task, he was arrested and shot, along with other underground people.

In 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Raisa Bychenko and Anton Ionesko as Righteous Among the Nations.

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