Kozhushko Pelaheia, Dubova (Kozhushko) Lidiia, Bruievych Heorhii

On the eve of the German-Soviet war, the widow Pelaheia Kozhushko lived with her 15-year-old daughter Lidiia in the town of Starokostiantyniv in the Khmelnytskyi region. She worked at a sugar factory. At work, she had a Jewish friend, Hanna Petrova (née Kogan). With the beginning of the war, Hanna's husband was mobilized to the front. Later, his wife received a message about his death.

In July 1941, Hitler's occupying forces were already establishing their own rules in the city of Starokostiantyniv. Several hundred Jews were killed immediately; the rest became the residents of the ghetto that the Nazis organized in the northern outskirts of the city.

Hanna Petrova left her five-year-old son Leonid in the care of Pelaheia and, taking one-year-old Viktor, went to the ghetto. Pelaheia and Lida took care of the Jewish boy until the end of the war, hiding him in the outbuildings or in the nearby forest during raids.

Meanwhile, Hanna was looking for ways to liberate herself. It had already been agreed on a joint escape from the ghetto with the husband's long-time friend Heorhii Bruievych, but unexpectedly, the illness and death of little Viktor stood in the way of their plans. Although in the end, when rumors of executions began to spread, Heorhii bribed the guard and still convinced the grief-stricken woman to run away. They have broken free just before the mass shooting of Jews on May 20, 1942. On that day, the Nazis killed 6,500 people. The last execution in 1942 in the city of Starokostiantyniv took place on November 30. At that time, about 5 thousand Jews were driven to a field near Novytskyi Forest and shot.

Hanna and Heorhii stopped in a remote village and waited there for the expulsion of the Nazis. After the war, the young people got married, took Leonid who had been saved by the Kozhushko family and settled in the town of Vasylkiv in Kyiv region.

In 2004, Yad Vashem recognized Pelaheia Kozhushko, Lidiia Dubova (Kozhushko) and Heorhii Bruievych as Righteous Among the Nations.