Israeli Rescues Ukrainian Grandchildren of Woman Who Saved Her Family in the Holocaust

An Israeli woman last week helped two Ukrainian sisters fleeing the Russian invasion in their hometown find refuge in Israel, decades after the sisters’ grandmother hid the Israeli woman’s grandmother from the Nazis.

Mariya Blyshchik and her family risked their lives saving Fanya Bass and other Jews during the Holocaust. Fanya Bass’ granddaughter Sharon Bass last week helped rescue Mariya Blyshchik’s grandchildren, Alona Chugai, 47, and Lasia Orshoko, 36, arranging them emergency visas with Israel’s Ministry of Interior and bringing them to safety.

“We Jews, we say that if you do something good, like their grandparents did, it will come back to you,” Sharon Bass said. “I feel like it is my obligation to be there for them and close the debt we owed them.”

Bass had been in touch with the family when the invasion began.

“We talked, they were very stressed and scared and they wanted to come here to be safe,” Sharon told Israeli television. “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.”

“We were very happy and excited when we finally saw them at the airport,” Sharon said. “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.”

The two sisters are staying with Bass and her parents, respectively.

“We Jews we say that if you do something good, like their grandparents did, it will come back to you,” Sharon told the Jewish News. “I feel like it is my obligation to be there for them and close the debt we owed them.”

“Eventually we got a permit for them to come. 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,” Sharon said.

Fanya Bass, then known as Rozenfeld, was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.

Aish.com reports:

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.

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.