Tkachenko Mariia

Mariia Tkachenko and her family lived in the village of Bratslav (now the urban-type settlement of Bratslav) in the Vinnytsia region. Since her husband and eldest daughter left to work in 1938, the woman stayed with her youngest son Borys. The Jewish Bronfman family lived next to the Tkachenko family. Ukrainians and Jews were friends. After the occupation of the region by German and Romanian troops, the Bronfman family found themselves in a ghetto. The conditions in which the Jews were kept were terrible, most of the slaves were malnourished and sick with typhus. The mortality rate was very high. Mariia Tkachenko tried to do something for her neighbors. She negotiated with the guards and periodically took 15-year-old Yeva and 12-year-old Yankel Bronfman home for a few hours to bathe and feed them, while 7-year-old Rakhil remained with her mother behind the barbed wire.

In January 1942, most of the Jews, including the Bronfman family, were transferred to the village of Pechera to the “Dead Loop” camp. And in the urban-type settlement of Bratslav in August of the same year, the occupiers organized two labor camps for the German construction companies “Todt-Dormann” and “Horst und Jessen.” About 1,200 Jews deported from Romania were placed there, who were used in road construction.

Yankel managed to escape on the way to the village of Pechera. The boy hid in his native village, occasionally visiting Mariia Tkachenko for provisions. But in the fall of 1943, he was recognized and shot by ghetto guards. Yeva and Rakhil Bronfman managed to return to the urban-type settlement of Bratslav after the death of their mother. Maria Tkachenko took care of them until the end of the occupation. After the war, they met their father, who had been demobilized from the Red Army.

In the 1990s, the Bronfman family moved to Israel. Yeva Kysyliuk (Bronfman) submitted testimony about her savior to Yad Vashem.

In 2000, Mariіa Tkachenko was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.