Panchenko Maryna, Halyna, Polina and Kateryna

The Panchenko family lived in the village of Kryva Ruda in the Poltava region. After the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, Mykhailo Panchenko was mobilized to the Red Army and perished at the front. His wife Maryna remained with daughters: 19-year-old Halyna, 13-year-old Polina and 11-year-old Kateryna.

Among their neighbors and friends was a Jewish couple of Kachan: the Ukrainian Oleksii and the Jew Theodosia. The husband was local, while the wife appeared in the village after marriage, in 1934. All the peasants knew about her ethnicity, and in the beginning of the German occupation, someone reported against her. Theodosia was detained and taken to the district auxiliary police. Oleksii ran after the carriage, where his wife sat, holding the newborn daughter in her hands. Meanwhile, the neighbors took two elder children, 7-year-old Pavlo and one-year-old Nina. Next day, Oleksii Kachan, struck by grief, returned to the village. He did not manage to save Theodosia and the youngest daughter. Being afraid of police taking two other children, he decided to hide them at the house of Maryna Panchenko.

Maryna and her daughters took care of Pavlo and Nina, despite fear and poverty. Shortly after that, Oleksii Kachan joined Soviet partisans, and the Panchenko family had been sheltering his children all that time, not allowing them to go outside, and taking them to the special hideout deep in the cellar during the visits of other people.

 After the war, the rescued children returned to their father. They grew up, created their own families, and lived in Kryva Rudka all their lives. Polina and Kateryna, two younger daughters of Maryna Panchenko, moved to their sister Halyna to Israel in the late 1990s, and lived in  Yeruham.

On December 10, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Maryna Panchenko and her daughters Halyna Panchenko, Polina Kaliverda (Panchenko) and Kateryna Movchan (Panchenko) as the Righteous Among the Nations.

 Polina Kaliverda (Panchenko) receives the diploma of the Righteous Among the Nations. Jerusalem, Israel, 2001