Olena Hurbych-Bodylova

Olena Bodуlova was born and grew up in Kyiv. After the Germans occupied the city on September 19, 1941, Olena joined one of the underground groups. In March 1943, she was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. On the way, she managed to escape, and she joined a group of young workers who were sent to a labor camp in Germany, in the suburbs of Hanover.

Elena was there until August 1943, when she managed to escape again. After overcoming many difficulties and going through many trials, she reached the town of Bila Tserkva of Kyiv region, and began hiring in the neighboring village of Terezyne.

In 1939 about 9,000 Jews lived in Bila Tserkva. During the war of 4500 persons of Jewish origin were killed. In Bila Tserkva, not only local Jews were exterminated, but also from nearby settlements, as the city was the center of the district (gebit). The mass shootings took place on August 19-20 and 22, 1941, with the arrival of representatives of the Einsatzgruppe C in Bila Tserkva. In Bila Tserkva, the so-called Seventh platform was the place of mass extermination. Before the German attack, a military unit was stationed there. The doomed were forced to take off their clothes, placed on the edge of a dug pit, and shot in cold blood. Another place of mass executions was the Third platform. At the end of August 1941, more than 700 Jews, including women, children, and elderly people, gathered near the mayor's office under the guise of being involved in cleaning the city streets. They were surrounded by twenty policemen and taken to the place of execution, which was located behind the city bazaar. All Jews, regardless of age, were subject to execution.

In September 1943, a group of builders arrived to the village, and soon Olena overheard a conversation between one of them and a local policeman. They were talking about a worker named Fadei, who was suspected of being a Jew, but who pretended to be a Pole. Olena hurried to tell Fadei about the conversation she had heard, and from his reaction, she understood that these suspicions were true.

Fadei asked her what to do, and she suggested him to hide in the basement of her house. Before the arrival of Soviet troops in the city on January 4, 1944, Olena took care of Fadei and hid him from other residents of the house.

Fadei was born in Lodz, Poland. His real name was Solomon Hurwitz. After the partition of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, he fled to what became Soviet territory, but in 1941 he found himself under German occupation again.

Prior to meeting with Olena, he was constantly in hiding, sleeping in the fields, finding occasional earnings, and constantly fearing arrest because he did not have any documents with him. Thanks to Olena, he found a safe shelter at a critical moment, and so was able to survive. During that time, while he was in Olena’s house they loved each other. In June 1944, after Solomon changed his surname from Hurwitz to Hurbych and took the fictitious name of Fadei, he and Olena got married.

On November 7, 2000, Yad Vashem awarded Olena Hurbych-Bodylova the honorary title of “Righteous Among the Nations”.