Kotliarevska (Zahrebelna) Lidia

Before the beginning of the Second World War 17-year-old Lidia married Jew Oleksandr Kotliarevskkyi, who was four years older than Lidia. At the beginning of the German-Soviet war, Oleksandr was drafted into the Red Army. One month after that Lidia was notified about his death on the battlefield. By that moment she was pregnant and gave birth to the daughter 6 months after the death of her husband. She named girl Oleksandra, in honor of her husband Oleksandr. A young mother with an infant returned to her parents, who were trying to resist the occupants and Lidia supported them in this decision. Since December of 1941, their apartment became the meeting point for the members of the local underground movement. There was also a shelter for a Soviet officer of Jewish origin Borys Sondak in one of the rooms. He escaped from the German camp and now was forging official documents and publishing anti-German leaflets.

Lidia managed to get a job in the German hospital. As she understood German, she was gathering useful information and medicines for the Soviet underground movement.

Tetiana Batezhenko was also engaged in an anti-German activity together with Lidia. Her husband, Jew Yuhym Rabovskyi, was in the Red Army. Their 1-year-old son Victor was permanently hidden in different apartments around the city. German authorities were frequently searching for the boy in Tetiana’s house, as they didn’t believe in the woman’s story about the death of her son. Sometimes Victor was hiding in Lidia’s apartment. During the German raids, she was taking both her daughter and Victor to the city’s park and hiding together with them in the bushes.

In October of 1942, the new wave of arrests fell upon the anti-German underground movement. Lidia’s parents and Borys Sondak were also arrested and later sentenced to death. Lidia with her daughter Oleksandra managed to escape from the city of Dnipropetrovsk (now- Dnipro). They were hiding in the apartments of Lidia’s friends till the end of the German occupation. Tetiana Batezhenko and her son Victor also survived the occupation due to the help of their relatives and friends.

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On October 31, 2002, Lidia Kotliarevska was named the “Righteous Among the Nations”.