Jelena Valendovitch

 

I took this picture in the Great Patriotic War Museum of the citation of Jelena Valendovitch, who helped save a Jewish mother and child from certain death.

Here is an extract of what Jelena did from a book called The Path of the Righteous By Mordecai Paldiel.

After the fall of Minsk, in June 1941, the city's 90,000 Jews were herded into a ghetto set up in a nearby suburb. In a single night (November 7, 1941), 12,000 of them were machine-gunned to death alongside the mass graves they had been forced to dig. Two weeks later another 5,000 were killed. More executions followed, and by February 1943, subtracting the 10,000 or so who had managed to escape, only 9,000 Jews were left. They too would all soon die.

Living in the Minsk ghetto in 1941 were Katia Tokarski, her mother, and her two-year-old daughter Vala. Whenever a German raid seemed likely, Katia passed Vala through the barbed-wire fence around the ghetto to a friendly gentile woman outside. Dangerous as this might have been, she reasoned that it was less dangerous than taking Valla into one of the ghetto's underground bunkers. there had been too many cases of babies being smothered so that a banker's location would not be revealed by the sound of an infant crying.

Katia's mother and daughter, like Katia herself, had blonde hair and fair complexions. Since it was obvious that the raids on the ghetto would continue until there were no Jews left, Katia proposed that the three of them should escape to the Aryan side and try to pass as non-Jews.

"No, my daughter," Katia's mother responded. "I was born Jewish and want to die Jewish. Why go somewhere else only to meet death? I prefer to meet it here." But she urged Katia and Vala to escape without her. "Maybe the two of you will make it. A beautiful blonde girl, speaking good German! Who knows?"

For the time being Katia decided to do what she could for Vala. In the early morning hours of September 1, 1942, she reported to her work detail with Vala tucked in her arms and completely covered up. The day had not yet dawned; and in the semidarkness the guards at the gate did not notice anything. Once outside the ghetto, Katta slipped away as the detail turned a corner and ran into the ruins of a bombed-out building.

What followed was like a modern-day version of the biblical story of Pharaoh's daughter and the infant Moses. Katia set Vala on the pavement in front of the building and hid a short distance away to see what would heppen. The child played quietly for a while, then began to cry. Before long a tall man happened past. He picked the child up and studied its face for a moment. Vala, as if instinctively, touched a finger to his neck.

"At first," Katia relates, "I almost ran over to him, but I controlled myself and stayed where I was." With the child in his arms, the man walked away, and Katia followed at a safe distance. Eventually he entered a house. Making a mental note of the address, Katia left and rejoined her work detail.

The man who had taken Vala home was Misha Gromov, an escaped Russian POW. He was living with Jelena Vandendovitch, who had found him wounded in the city park, and her young son Eugenyi. When Gromov told Jelena how he had found the infant, she realized at once that the child was Jewish. She decided to protect her, telling her neighbors that the girl was her neice from a distant village.

Back in the ghetto, Katia was uneasy about Vala. She felt she had to see her at least once more to make sure she was being well cared for. One day about six weeks later Katia again managed to slip away from her work detail. Rushing to the house where Gromov had taken the child, she entered, opened the first door she came across, and, pushing aside a curtain, found herself face to face with her daughter.

"When she saw me, Vala stood up in her crib. The woman in the room, thinking that the presence of a 'stranger' had frightened the child, took her in her arms." Stepping over to the crib, Katia silently caressed Vala's leg. "She began to weep, and I wept too. Then the woman understood everything. She sent the man [Misha] away, telling him to lock the door on his way out. And that was the beginning of my friendship with Jelena, my daughter's rescuer."

Jelena offered to hide Katia is the Nazis began to liquidate the ghetto, but Katia would not accept. "Wherever I go death follows," she said. "The safety of your home means more to me than my own life." Deeply moved by Katia's reply, Jelena promised to take care of Vala no matter what. With this, the two women parted.

In the months that followed the makeshift family of Jelena, Gromov, Eugenyi, and Vala managed very nicely. Gromov's illegal earnings as a watchmaker were enough to support them, and whenever a neighbor became too inquisitive they moved to another dwelling. As far as Vala was concerned, Jelena and Misha were her parents.

Meanwhile, with Vala safe Katia was now able to look out for herself. On March 30, 1943, she escaped from the ghetto with some other people and joined a partisan unit operating in the nearby forest. Unknown to her, Jelena had joined a partisan unit operating about 30 kilometers away from her own.

Over the next few months, Katia was told on more than one occasion that her daughter had been seen with the other band. One day she decided to find out whether there was any truth to the stories. The journey through the forest was dangerous, but at its end she was tearfully reunited with Jelena and Vala. Katia arranged for them to be housed in a village about 4 kilometers from her unit's camp and from then until the liberation in July 1944 visited them every two or three days.

As for Misha Gromov, he too joined a partisan unit, but he did not live to see the end of the war. Several days before the liberation of Minsk, he fell in battle.

This is just one of many stories that you can read about the atrocities of the Nazis and the heroism that fought them. I think living in the UK, we have our views of the horrors of war, but they are small compared to what went on in mainland Europe.

The Great Patriotic War Museum in Minsk opened the eyes of many of the England fans to just how awful the last war all was.