98-year-old Righteous Among the Nations Nina Bogorad died in Kyiv
There are about 100 people alive in the world today, whom Israel honored with the Righteous Among the Nations title for saving Jews during the Holocaust. Eight of them live in Ukraine.
There were 12 of them before the full-scale russian invasion began. One was evacuated to Israel, three died. Among them is Nina Bogorad, who died the other day in Kyiv. She was 97 years old.
Nina’s story is both dramatic and romantic. It happened in early 1942 in the village Andrushivka, Zhytomyr region, where seventeen-year-old Nina (née Subbotenko) lived with her parents. A soldier, who called himself Ivan, came to their house for help. He had been wounded at the front and was taken prisoner along with the entire field hospital. At the second attempt he managed to escape from captivity, but his wound did not allow him to go far. In this condition he was taken in by the Subbotenko family.
One night they heard Ivan speaking Yiddish in his sleep. Realizing that they would face death for helping a Jew, the Subbotenkos kept the soldier anyway. His real name was Yakov Bogorad.
After his recovery, he headed a partisan detachment that operated in the vicinity of Andrushivka. Yakov and his savior Nina got married after the war.
According to the Israeli law, despite the fact that they are not Jews, all Righteous Among the Nations have the right to repatriation and citizenship of Israel. After the start of the full-scale russian invasion, Nina Bogorad was offered this opportunity. However, she refused — her grandchildren are now fighting at the front.
