Today Ukraine honors the memory of those who during the Holocaust were saving Jews, risking their own lives
Pylna, Strilecha, Hatyshche, Ohirtseve, Pletenivka, Lyptsi. These villages in the north of the Kharkiv region and all others in the vicinity of Kharkiv were places of mass shelters for Jews during World War II.
Alas, the names of these villages are not in the lists of the Yad Vashem — The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. You won’t find the names of the saviors — the residents of these settlements in them either.
However, almost every story of the rescue of Jews who escaped death in the Drobytsky Yar in December 1941-January 1942 describes how, sensing danger, Jews moved from Kharkiv to the countryside, where they survived the occupation. To move to a village meant to survive in 1941–1943.
Today Ukraine honors the memory of those who during the Holocaust were saving Jews, risking their own lives.
Along with the 2,691 Ukrainian Righteous Among the Nations, officially recognized by Yad Vashem, it is important not to forget about the thousands of nameless saviors. Including the inhabitants of those villages that survived the Nazi occupation of World War II and became a shelter for Jews during the Holocaust, and which today Russia has been trying to occupy again since 2022.
