Sobolevsky Josyp, Maryna and Antonina

On July 19, 1941, the Soviet troops retreated from the town of Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Vinnytsia region. Only the garrison of the pillbox No. 112 under command of Lieutenant A. Obrytko in the outskirts was repelling the enemy attacks in the complete encirclement for one more week. Refusing to surrender, all they died. The district center got under occupation.

In the autumn of 1941, the occupiers started mass extermination of the Jews in the town. As of 1939, 8,703 Jews (39,8% of population) lived in Mohyliv-Podilskyi. Most of them were ordinary workers and artisans, whose lives drastically changed. On August 15, 1941, the large ghetto was established, where not only Jews from Mohyliv-Podilskyi were concentrated, but from other territories as well. In particular, in the autumn of 1941, over 15,000 persons from Bessarabia and Bukovina were relocated there. Initially, they were settled in the barracks of the former infantry regiment, then taken to the ghetto. The prisoners were kept open-air and not fed. Part of them died of typhus, many others were shot dead.

Being in the ghetto, the Jews received help from the local residents, who often, risking their own lives, even harbored them in their houses. In particular, among those people was the family of the 79-year-old widow Antonina Sobolevska. Polish by ethnicity, she lived in Mohyliv-Podilskyi together with the family of her son Josyp: his wife Maryna and three children.

In the end of July 1941, Sobolevsky family sheltered four Jewish families in their house, having in total 24 persons. All they lived in the town before the war and were neighbors and friends of Antonina’s family. After the outbreak of the war, they tried to evacuate to the East, but failed. Coming back to Mohyliv-Podilskyi, they were afraid of going to their houses, as they heard about many Jewish families who suffered robbery.

One of Sobolevsky family’s neighbors reported on the sheltered families, so the police came to arrest Josyp the next day. Some of the Jews had already left the house, while many others were still hiding in the house and the garden. Fortunately, during the searches, the Jews were not found. The police only warned that the Sobolevsky family was under strict supervision since then. However, the danger did not change the decision of Antonina Sobolevska’s family to keep helping the Jews.

Hersh and Frima Treiger, as well as their relatives, sisters Hana and Sina Schwartzbreut, remained in the house of the Sobolevsky family, until they went to the ghetto in the autumn of 1941. During the entire period of the Romanian occupation, from September 1941 to March 1944, the Sobolevsky family hid the Jews in their house and helped the ghetto prisoners with food.

After the war, Josyp Sobolevsky kept friendship with many of those, whom he and his family helped during the occupation.

On May 5, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Antonina Sobolevska, her son Josyp Sobolevskyi and his wife Maryna as the Righteous Among the Nations.