Israeli Rescues Ukrainian Grandchildren of Woman who Saved her Family in the Holocaust

Advertisements
Advertisements

8 min read

FacebookTwitterLinkedInPrintFriendlyShare

Sharon Bass felt it was her obligation to be there for them and close the debt her family owed them.

During the Holocaust, Mariya Blyshchik and her family risked their lives to save Jews in Ukraine. Last week, the granddaughter of Fanya Bass, one of the Jews they saved, helped rescue Mariya Blyshchik’s grandchildren, bringing them to safety in Israel.

Sharon Bass (top right) with her Aunt Chagit (left), and Lesia Orshoko (bottom right)

“We Jews, we say that if you do something good, like their grandparents did, it will come back to you,” explained Sharon Bass, whose grandmother Fanya was sheltered by Mariya Blyshchik’s family. “I feel like it is my obligation to be there for them and close the debt we owed them.”

Sharon, a 46-year-old Israeli living near Tel Aviv, grew up hearing stories about her grandmother Fanya’s wartime experiences and the way Mariya Blyschchik’s family saved her life. She’s always kept in touch with the Blyschik family. After Russia invaded Ukraine, bombing cities and sending over two and a half million refugees fleeing, Sharon knew she had to act.

“We talked, they were very stressed and scared and they wanted to come here to be safe,” Sharon told Israeli television last week. “There were sirens all the time. The electricity was on and off. They heard the bombing in the distance…. I can relate to this situation because of what has happened here in Israel. But it is still very different. So, we said we will do everything to help you.”

Fanya Bass in the 1940’s (Yad Vashem Archives)

Sharon got in touch with Israel’s Interior Ministry to ask for emergency visas for Alona Chugai, 47, and Lasia Orshoko, 36, Mariya Blyshchik’s granddaughters. On Sunday, March 6, Alona and Lasia flew to Israel. Sharon and her relatives greeted them at the airport.

“We were very happy and excited when we finally saw them at the airport,” Sharon described. “We cried, we laughed, but also the tension was there. Our thoughts were with the family that stayed behind. We had mixed emotions… The situation in Ukraine is so difficult right now. This family that we have been in contact with for all these years were so sad and felt that the best thing is to come here to be safe.”

Hunting Down Ukrainian Jews

When World War II broke out, the small western Ukrainian town of Rafalowka was home to about 600 Jews, a third of the town’s population. With the outbreak of war, Soviet forces occupied Rafalowka and for a time, the Jews of the town were relatively safe. Jews fled to Rafalowka from Nazi-occupied areas in nearby Poland, swelling the Jewish population.

In July 1941, Nazi forces took control of Rafalowka. They set up a Jewish ghetto in the town several months later, forcing Jews from Rafalowka and from neighboring towns to live in the ghetto’s cramped, unsanitary conditions. About 2,500 Jews were interred in the Rafalowka ghetto.

Nazis emptied out the ghetto on August 29, 1942. The Jews were forced to march away from the town and were shot to death, their bodies thrown into mass graves. Dozens of Jews managed to escape into the surrounding woods. Some joined Soviet partisan fighting groups. Only about 30 Jews from Rafalowka survived.

Their fates mirrored that of Jews across the entire country of Ukraine. In 1939, when World War II broke out, Ukraine had the largest population of Jews anywhere in the world. One and a half million Jews were murdered in Ukraine during the Holocaust. Most were killed by special Nazi units called Einsatzgruppen, which recruited local collaborators to help murder civilians who were seen to be enemies of the Nazi regime.

Risking Their Lives

The Rozenfeld family with Fanya is in the center, 1930's (Yad Vashem Archives)

One of the survivors of the liquidation of the Rafalowka Ghetto was a brilliant 20-year-old Jewish women named Fanya Rozenfeld. She was the only member of her entire family to survive. Fanya wandered in the thickly wooded countryside, going from village to village trying to evade detection and forage for food, until she was taken in by Filip and Teklya Konyukh, a deeply religious couple living in the Ukrainian village of Mulczyce, who offered her a place to stay for one night.

The next morning, Fanya told her hosts that she’d had a vivid dream the night before of reading from the Book of Isaiah in front of a congregation. The Konyukhs, like most of the residents in their village, were Baptists, and were moved by Fanya’s dream.

They took Fanya to their weekly Baptist meeting, where she met Konon Kaluta, a local Baptist preacher. The entire community was impressed with Fanya’s extensive knowledge of the Bible and affectionately dubbed her “Saint Feodosiya.” She lived with the Konyukhs for a time, and was soon joined by two other Jews, Shlomo Appleboim and his son Sender, who’d escaped from the Jewish ghetto in the town of Wlodzimierzec. Filip Konyukh told the three Jews he sheltered, “God sent you to me and I consider it an honor to save Jews.”

Within a few months, it became too dangers to stay with the Konyukhs. The Appleboims moved in with another non-Jewish family, and Fanya moved in with the preacher Konon Kaluta, his wife Anna, their four children, and two of Konon’s daughters from a previous marriage, Anna and Mariya. Kalutas too saw saving Jews as a moral duty and taught that message to his Baptist flock.

Konon and Anne Kaluta (Yad Vashem Archives)

Soon, the Kalutas took in two more Jewish girls. Rivka Bass was 13; her father Yaakov and brother David hid in the thick forest nearby. They also took in 11-year-old Masha Dreizen-Wolfstal, who was also from Rafalowka. Fanya found her lying on the ground in the forest, exhausted and without food or protection

Masha later wrote an entry titled “Fanya, My Angel” in a memorial book for Rafalowka describing the moment Fanya found her in the forest. “Someone resembling an angel dressed in beautiful warm clothes like a non-Jew bowed down and spoke with a soft and pleasant voice…. I believed that Fanya was perhaps an angel. She was so beautiful and good.” Fanya picked up the exhausted girls and carried her to the Kaluta’s home.

Fanya moved again in 1943, when gangs of antisemitic Ukrainian partisans entered the area. She was sheltered in the nearby village of Sudcze by another Baptist preacher, Andrey Kuyava, along with his wife Yarina and son Nikolay. She was liberated by the Soviet army in early 1944 and no longer had to live in hiding.

Building a New Life in Israel

After the Holocaust, Fanya married Yaakov Bass, whose daughter Rivka hid with her in the Kulatas’ home. She became stepmother to Rivka and David, and the entire family moved to Israel. There, they got involved with many charities, trying to extend the same love and helping hand to other people in need that they had experienced in Ukraine during the Holocaust.

Right to left Fanya Bass – nee Rosenfeld – Rivka Bass, Masha Dreizen, Yafa Slotnik, Yafa Blizovski, Hungary, 1945 (Yad Vashem Archives)

Through the years they kept in touch with the Kulata family in Ukraine. Kolon Kulata’s daughter Mariya married and became Mariya Blyshchik. Mariya’s granddaughters Alona and Lasia remained in touch with Fanya’s grandchildren.

Alona and Lasia grew up intensely aware of their family’s wartime heroism. In 1995, their grandmother Mariya Blyshchik, her sister Anna Chugay, and her parents Konon and Anna Kaluta, were all named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. (Filip and Teklya Konyukh, their sons Aleksander and Andrey Konyukh, and Andrey and Yarina Kuyava and their son Nikolay Kuyava, were also named Righteous Among the Nations. The title denotes a non-Jewish hero who risked his or her life to save Jews during the Holocaust.)

Alona and Lasia even lived in Israel for five years as part of a program that brings the descendants of those who saved Jews to live and work in the Jewish state.

Campaigning to Help

As Russian soldiers encircled cities and towns in Ukraine, Sharon Bass – Fanya Bass’s granddaughter – knew she had to help. Alona and Lasia were terrified of remaining in Ukraine. Their home town of Rovno, in Ukraine’s west, has come under shelling and there are fears that the town could be destroyed.

Sharon started a campaign in Israel to get the women emergency entry permits. “Eventually, we got a permit for them to come,” Sharon explained to Israel’s Channel 13. “Now we are trying to get them permission to stay in Israel because I don’t know if they will have anything to go back to.”

Lasia Orshoko moved in with Sharon and her family near Tel Aviv; Alona Chugai is living with Sharon’s parents in the nearby town of Petah Tikva.

“They let her into the house and treated her (Fanya) like a daughter while the whole family was in danger of death,” Sharon explained. “If the Nazis had found out that they had been giving refuge they would have killed the whole family…”

“What I am doing now is like giving back, just a little bit, of what my grandparents gave to other and the righteous family in Ukraine gave to them. I feel that because of them I am here.”

Click here to comment on this article
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
EXPLORE
LEARN
MORE
Explore
Learn
Resources
Next Steps
About
Donate
Menu
Languages
Menu
Social
.