Zamoroko (Lysenko) Yevhenia, Sopova Klavdia

Before the Nazi occupation of Kherson, unmarried Klavdia Sopova shared the small room with her friend Yevhenia Lysenko (after marriage – Zamoroko). They were the school teachers: Klavdia – of the Russian language and Literature, and Yevhenia – of Physics.

The occupation of the city lasted from August 1941 to March 1944. Losing their jobs, the friends found the new one to earn for living – at the address board of the newly established auxiliary police. Among their duties were preservation and checking of the numerous address books with the name lists of the residents, as well as information on the age, occupation and ethnicity of the residents. The cleaners and concierges of each house had to bring the address book to the police.

In late September 1941, Klavdia met her former pupil – 16-year-old Maria Spivak. A few days before, on September 23, during the mass extermination of the Jews in Kherson, the girl’s parents, junior brothers and sisters and other relatives died. Maria miraculously survived and required the documents to prove her non-Jewish origin. The teachers promised to help her. Next day, they spent a lot of time searching the address book with the record on the girl, but there was no such one in the police.

Taking a risk, Maria went home, where she found the book at the cleaner and took it to Klavdia and Yevhenia. They falsified the text adding that 15 years ago the Jewish family of Spivak adopted the Bulgarian orphan Maria. The teachers sent the request to the  police for the restoration of the documents with the signatures falsified by them. They received this official document for the girl in which she was recognized as Bulgarian. Therefore, Maria found a job as a cleaner in the German military hospital.

Often visiting Klavdia and Yevhenia at their home, Maria had no idea that the teachers were sheltering the Jewish family of three persons in the flat. In April 1942, the hospital was moved to the East, and Maria lost job. By the advice of Klavdia and Yevhenia, she volunteered to work in Germany. She worked in Hildesheim at the military equipment factory, and after the city was taken by the American troops she did not tell that she was born in the USSR. Until 1948, Maria Spivak stayed in the camp for displaced persons, and then went to Israel. After the war Klavdia and Yevhenia continued their work as teachers. They were close friends until their last days. Yevhenia died after Klavdia in 2001. Maria (in marriage – Gurevich) never met her saviors again.

On October 23, 2006, the Yad Vashem posthumously recognized Klavdia Sopova and Yevhenia Zamoroko (Lysenko) as the Righteous Among the Nations.

In 2007, in the Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington DC, USA), the descendants of Yevhenia Zamoroko (Lysenko) were officially given the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. Mykola Zamoroko received his mother’s honorary award from the Ambassador of Israel to the USA.