Vira, Pavlo and Yevhen Rafalskyi

Vira and Pavlo Rafalskyi with their son Yevhen lived in Kyiv.

Soon after the German troops entered the city, the proclamations with an order to all the Jews of Kyiv appeared everywhere. According to this order, all the Jews of the city should be gathered on the crossroad of Dehtarivska and Melnykova streets. Among those who obeyed that order was also Vira`s acquaintance Valentyna Mazlakh. They knew each other since they studied together at Kharkiv pedagogical college. Since these times, Valentyna lived through her parents` arrest and execution in Moscow in 1938. She divorced her husband and moved to Kyiv. She settled in an apartment on Mykhaylivska street.

Valentyna left her nine-year-old daughter Eleonora under Rafalskyi’s supervision, and gone to Syrets`. When Vira and Pavlo learned about the massacre of the Jews in Babyn Yar they decided to save the girl. But it was dangerous to hide even a little Jewish girl in the house. There always was a risk that somebody among the neighbors would betray them. That is why the Rafalskyis created a legend that Nora`s parents were killed during the airstrike on Pushkinska street. In addition, they lightened her hair with hydrogen peroxide. Then Vira and Pavlo got from the building manager a certificate proving that they didn’t possess any Jewish property. It was necessary because German soldiers arranged searching in the apartments looking for any property of murdered Jews. 

Part of the care about Nora was entrusted to twelve-year-old Yevhen. Among others, he had to walk with her. Once during one of their walks, Yevhen lost Eleonora. She came to her former apartment on Mykhailivska street. There she was noticed by a janitor who led her back to the Rafalskyis by night.

After this incident, Vira`s friend Maria Abrosimova arranged for the girl a certificate on the name of Ustymenko Eleonora, who allegedly was taken by Vira and Pavlo Rafalskyi from the orphanage.

Eleonora stayed with Rafalskyis up to the end of the occupation. Afterward, her relatives took her to Moscow.

After the war, Eleonora visited Kyiv just once in 1951. However, she managed to meet just with Maria Abrosimova. Both Pavlo and Vira Rafalskyis were convicted as collaborationists and send to the camps. They were released only after Stalin`s death.

Vira Rafalska died in 2003, just four years before her 100th anniversary. Her son Yevhen Rafalskyi died just two years after it. Pavlo Rafalsky died in 1988. Further destiny of Eleonora Mazlakh is unknown.

In 1998 the Ravalskyis family and Maria Abrosimova were awarded a high title “Righteous of Babyn Yar”.