Sokolova Valentyna

Valentyna Sokolova and her daughter Lidiia lived in Kerch on the Crimean Peninsula. She worked in a local hotel, whose director was Myron Porter.

The German army occupied the city on November 16, 1941. Registration of Jews began on November 22. A few days later, leaflets appeared on the streets with an order according to which all Jews – adults and children – were to come to Sinna Square on Saturday, November 29, from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. with a three-day supply of food.

The Jews who arrived at the square were taken in columns to prison. Within a few days, about 2,500 people had gathered. In early December, the shootings began. Among the victims of the Nazis was Myron Porter's family: his wife, youngest son, and parents. Myron himself managed to survive. When the machine-gun fire died down, the man climbed out of the firing pit and returned to the city in the dark. In the early morning, he knocked on the house of his colleague Valentyna Sokolova and asked for help. After the stress he had endured and the wounds he received, Myron was bedridden for several weeks with a fever. Valentyna and her daughter treated the wounds and bandaged them, trying to save the Jew's life. The women managed to get Myron out, and he remained under their care until the end of the occupation.

With the arrival of Soviet troops, his eldest son, Yuliy, who participated in the battles for the peninsula as part of the Red Army, searched for him.

After the war, the Porter family settled in Buhulma (now the Republic of Tatarstan), and the connection with the Sokolov family was lost, because they also changed their place of residence. Only after 25 years, Valentina received a letter from Myron Porter and found out that he had been trying to find her all these years. They were never able to meet, but they maintained a correspondence until Myron's death in 1970.

In 2004, Yad Vashem recognized Valentyna Sokolova as Righteous Among the Nations.