Bank of Portraits / Lapchynska Halyna, Chaiun Ahrypyna, Biletska Hanna, Katsuk Klavdiia

Lapchynska Halyna, Chaiun Ahrypyna, Biletska Hanna, Katsuk Klavdiia

Halyna Lapchynska, together with her mother Ahrypyna Chaiun, lived in Proskuriv (current Khmelnytskyi). Their neighbors were the Jewish Feldberh family. Halyna was friends with Rebeka Feldberh.

The Germans occupied the city on July 7, 1941, and already in the autumn, the first executions of Jews began. The Proskuriv ghetto was created within the Jewish quarters from the Southern Bug River on the St. Kamianetska to St. Podilska, along it to St. Proskurivske Pidpillia and again to the Southern Bug River. Today it is the center of the city. At the same time, there were 3 thousand people on this territory. They were shot in two stages. At the beginning of October 1942, the Nazis exterminated the residents of the ghetto, and on November 30 – the prisoners of the Jewish labor camp and the specialists who were held there. Together with the local Jews in the town of Proskuriv, their fellow tribesmen from the surrounding villages were killed. In total, more than 9,500 people were executed.

The Feldberh family also became victims of the Holocaust. Their 13-year-old daughter Yevheniia managed to escape and ran to the Lapchynska' house, where Halyna hid her. When the roundups intensified, the woman agreed with the director of the local school where Yevheniia studied before the war, that she would shelter the girl for a certain period. Hanna Biletska agreed and transported Yevheniia to the village of Ivankivtsi to their old parents. After the danger passed, the girl returned to Halyna's house. Her hiding places were closets, the attic or old Ahrypyna's bed.

One of the neighbors accidentally found out that the women were hiding a Jewish girl, and offered Halyna help. He obtained false documents for the girl, with which she crossed to the territory of Transnistria in the city of Kryzhopil, where his sister Klavdiia Katsuk lived. Yevheniia stayed in her house until March 1944.

Since no one from Yevheniia's family survived the Holocaust, after the war she returned to live with Halyna Lapchynska.

In 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Halyna Lapchynska, Ahrypyna Chaiun, Hanna Biletska and Klavdiia Katsuk as Righteous Among the Nations.

Svitlana Demchenko

Kyiv

National museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War

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