Bank of Portraits / Turkevych Fedir and Mariia, Fedorenko Nadiia, Morhun Halyna, Yurkivska (Samchynska) Yevheniia, Stash

Turkevych Fedir and Mariia, Fedorenko Nadiia, Morhun Halyna, Yurkivska (Samchynska) Yevheniia, Stashevska Vira
16-year-old Yevheniia Samchynska lived in the city of Bohuslav in the Kyiv region with her bedridden mother. The girl's father was conscripted at the beginning of the German-Soviet war. The neighbors of the Samchynskyi family were the were the Jewish Tetelman family. The head of the family, Isak Tetelman, was also at the front, and his Ukrainian wife, Nataliia, with five-year-old Abram and four-year-old Mykhailo remained in the city, which was occupied by units of the Wehrmacht.
When the Nazis began to publicly execute Jews, Nataliia turned to Yevheniia with a request to at least temporarily hide her boys. Moreover, she agreed. Nevertheless, the more time passed, the better the mother understood: she would not be able to take her sons home, especially after the mass shooting of Jews on September 21 in the Morozivske tract, on the outskirts of the city.
Since everyone knew that Abram and Mykhailo were "half-bloods", the occupiers thoroughly searched Nataliia's house and, not finding any children, arrested the woman. After questioning, she was released, ordered to come to the police station with her sons in the morning. Having met Yevheniia on the street, she asked to hide the children with her friend Vira Stashevska, because she suspected that the Samchynskyi family would also be searched. From the announcements, all the townspeople knew of the death penalty for those who dared to help a Jew.
Yevheniia moved the children to another part of the city. Vira Stashevska lived with her two children; her husband was also at the front. The woman took Jewish boys into her house, and later Nataliia too. She told the neighbors that they were relatives. Once a German soldier, passing by the yard of the Stashevskyi family, saw little Abram playing in the street and shouted: "Yude!". Miraculously, Vira was lucky enough to convince him that the baby was not Jewish. In the future, it became dangerous to hide fugitives, and Nataliia moved to the house of other friends – Fedir and Mariia Turkevych. There she had to live with the boys in the cellar almost all the time, only sometimes entering the house at night to warm up. Halyna and Nadiia, the teenage daughters of the Turkevich family, took care of Abramchyk and Mykhailyk. No one guessed that Fedir and Mariia were hiding Jews on their property, not even their closest neighbor – Khoma Petrushenko, who also secretly hid his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
In 2002, Yad Vashem recognized Yevheniia Yurkivska (Samchynska), Vira Stashevska, Fedir and Mariia Turkevych and their daughters Halyna Morgun and Nadiia Fedorenko as Righteous Among the Nations.
Svitlana Demchenko
Kyiv
National museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War
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