Kravchenko Vekla

I have known her for a long time, since childhood. My native grandmother Anastasia took me outside to the neighbors. Next to us the elderly women lived. In one of such houses Hanna and Lukeria lived, in another – Vekla and Vustia. They were sisters. Their lives were different. The husband of one of them perished in the war, another one’s husband died, and the third one did not have a spouse. Therefore, they had to live together in the same house until the end of their lives.

They did not have children or close relatives. They lived quietly, almost invisibly, their lives passed in fasting and prayers. They lived in peace with their neighbors and other villagemates, worked at the collective farm and different institutions, as unnoticeable, but necessary workers.

I remember that in the long winter evenings these women had conversations about their lives, our village, horrible war times and the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. I greedily catched each word from their conversations that were carved in my childhood memories.

Granny Vekla and granny Vustia lived not far from the Baranykivka primary school, which was also known as “Buhryanska” school.

I recalled the stories of the eldest sister, granny Vekla, of how during the occupation of our region the Germans turned the school into a horse shed, and arrested the teachers and other representatives of the village intelligentsia. She told that the pedagogs, especially the ones from the other areas, hid from the Nazis at their neighbors.

The Jewish teachers were persecuted in the severest way. In order to save them, granny Vekla sheltered the Jewish teacher with a little child in her cellar, risking her own life.

Many years have passed since that time. My native grandmother died far ago. All her four sisters also died – Hanna, Lukeria, Vekla and Vustia. The new events gradually force to forget the older ones, the time inevitably clouds the images of these women.

No their photographs were preserved as they lived quietly. The elderly people who knew them well also died, while the younger ones do not remember their compatriots.

Probably, the memory of them could completely fade in the souls of people from Baranykivka, if there was no good tradition of our people to remember the good deeds for ages…

Once our Baranykivka Village Council received the letter from Liubov Danylenko from the Lviv region. She wrote that her father, Ivan Danylenko, was sent to work as the agronomist at the Baranykivka tractor station. His Jewish wife Ida Kolifman went to the village with him.

In the early days of the war Ivan Danylenko was recruited to the front, while Ida Kolifman continued to work as a teacher until the occupation of the village.

After the persecutions of the Jews started, granny Vekla took the young teacher with a 2-year-old child to her house. She harbored them until the liberation of the village from the German troops, impersonating her relative from Donbas. Then this family left and the connection was lost. Perhaps, nobody remembers it anymore.

Granny Vekla reminded of herself almost 30 years after her death. That was like a reminder to people that the goodness is not forgotten and it has deep eternal roots.