Most of the 50,000 Ukrainians JRNU helps each month are Jewish, but certainly not all. One couple in Kyiv who sought our help had an incredible story!
An elderly man, Valery, contacted Rabbi Markovich in Kyiv, with an urgent request for assistance for himself and his wife: "Nina is ill and bedridden, and our home was heavily damaged by a missile strike. We lack sufficient food and medical care; we have no one to turn to and nowhere to go."
Rabbi Markovich responded immediately, and in the process discovered an incredible story.
In 1943, Nina's parents risked their lives to save a Jewish father and son from the Nazis. Nina's parents hid the pair for eight months, while hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Many years later, Nina's parents were recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by a Ukrainian Jewish organization.
Nina was just a young girl in 1943, but she remembers the experience and understood the gravity of the situation. Today, she doesn’t know what happened to the family they rescued, but she recalls that the mother and siblings had already been killed by the Nazis when the father and son went into hiding at her family’s home.
"During that period," Nina said, “some of the neighbors knew the Jewish family was there, and no one spoke. No one told on us, because they didn’t support the Germans. Furthermore, everyone was afraid that if someone told the Germans, they would kill us all.”
To further complicate matters, Nina had several siblings, and a Nazi who was stationed there, used to come play with her and her sister often, to the horror of her father who feared for the safety of his family. Nina’s father created many excuses to discourage the Nazi from visiting the family, ultimately claiming that the neighbors would "talk" due to the (young) age of Nina’s sister. Fortunately, the excuse worked and the visits stopped.
After the war, the Jewish man and his son left, telling Nina’s family that he “would remember this for rest of my life, because you saved my life and the life of my son." As Rabbi Markovich explained, "the Germans were looking for him; the Germans were looking for this family, and couldn’t find them.”
Today, Rabbi Markovitch is assisting Nina and Valery with the repairs to their home as well as ensuring Nina receives proper medical care and food. Nina and her husband are two of the thousands of Ukrainians supported by JRNU each and every day. With your support we continue to save lives and restore hope.
Based on an article by Emily Schrader | YnetNEWS.com
