Khomychuk Mariia, Mikhieieva Anastasiia

Mariia Khomychuk lived in Vinnytsia with her two teenage sons. During the Holocaust, she saved her Jewish friend Zinaida Rakytova from being shot. On the eve of the Second World War, Zinaida moved with her daughter and son to the regional center, where her elderly parents lived. In July 1941, when the Germans were already on the approaches to Vinnytsia, son Leonid and his bride evacuated to the east. Zinaida and her daughter Maiia soon found themselves under occupation. Already at the end of the month, the first mass murder took place, the victims of which were 146 Jews. In the future, the shootings were regular.

On September 22, during the roundup of Jews, the Rakytov family miraculously escaped. Zinaida left Maiia with a Ukrainian neighbor, who put the girl in bed with her children and passed her off as her daughter, and she asked to hide with a friend of her youth Mariia Khomychuk. Unfortunately, Zinaida's parents and relatives were captured and shot that day.

Mariia found people who agreed to testify in writing before the occupation authorities that Zinaida was a Ukrainian. Based on this statement, the woman managed to get a new passport instead of the allegedly lost one. However, it was dangerous to stay in Vinnytsia, because she grew up there and many people knew about her true nationality.

In the summer of 1942, after long wanderings, mother and daughter stopped in the town of Vapniarka in Vinnytsia region, where they met Anastasiia Mikhieieva from Odesa.

Anastasiia came there ostensibly to visit friends, but in fact, she brought her Jewish friend Linda to hide there. She immediately understood that Zinaida was also Jewish, and before returning to Odesa, she offered to take Maiia. After much hesitation, Zinaida agreed to the proposal of a new acquaintance, and the 12-year-old girl went to Odesa, where she spent the next two years.

Anastasiia had no children of her own, so she gave all her love and care to Maiia. She worked with her according to the school program, because she herself worked as a chemistry teacher in one of the Odesa schools. She told the neighbors that she is the daughter of relatives who are at the front and entrusted her with the custody of the child. When rumors about the expected raids reached Anastasiia, she temporarily took Maiia to a children's hospital where she had friends.

After the war, Zinaida Rakytova took her daughter to Vinnytsia. For some time, the friends corresponded. Later, they learned that Anastasiia Mikhieieva had been arrested. Zinaida herself was the wife of an “enemy of the people” (her husband was repressed in 1937), so she did not dare to find out anything about the future fate of her daughter's savior.

Mariia Khomychuk and her sons also mysteriously disappeared from Vinnytsia, and no one could say where the family had moved.

In the 2000s, Maiia Venhrovych (Rakytova), a Canadian citizen, wrote a story about the role of these two women in her life.