Zavadska Konstantsia and Olena

Olena was born in city of Mohyliv-Podilskiy in the family of Evhen and Konstantsia Zavadski. Her father was a forester and her mother was a housewife.

In autumn of 1937, the representatives of Soviet secret police (NKVD) entered their Olena’s family house. They found a few polish postcards. Evhen was arrested and accused of being a polish spy. Evhen’s relatives tried to find some information about his fate. They sent many letters to all soviet governmental offices, but the answer was all the same: «Evhen Zavadskiy was condemned for 10 years of strict isolation». Only in the late 1950th, among the lists of condemned and rehabilitated citizens of Vinnytsya region, they found the name of their father. According to the record, Evhen Zavadskiy was executed on January 28 in 1938. He was posthumously rehabilitated.

After they lost their family breadwinner, Konstantsia was searching for any job to support her daughter and old mother. But she was “a wife of the public enemy”, so she was rejected everywhere. Only in 1940 she finally got the job of a nurse in a local hospital. Also, she became a student of the Red Cross course.

During the Nazi occupation, the family was helping Jews. In the summer of 1941, during the raids of German police, they were hiding the Jewish family of Lirner, who were their neighbors. Also, they provided shelter for Semen and Tsylia Perelman and for their children Sara and Oleksandr. Sara Perelman was Olena’s classmate and friend. So Zavadski were done their best to save Perelman’s family. In autumn Semen Perelman died of typhus. Tsylia with younger son Oleksander moved to the ghetto, but Sara lived with Zavadski till the end of the occupation.

In 1948 Olena finished studying in Odesa and was sent to the city of Torez in Donbas. She was a doctor on one of the local coal mines. There she met her future husband. After the wedding, they lived in Donetsk where Olena was a doctor-dermatologist for a period of 20 years. In 1987 she moved to Kyiv.

Sara Perelman also became a doctor. After the successful graduating from Leningrad Medical Institute she was a children’s cardiologist. In 1992 she immigrated to the United States of America.

Families of rescuers and rescued still maintaining good relations.

In 1996 Konstantsia and Olena were awarded with Righteous Among the Nations award.