Belova Aleksandra

Logvinenko, Zinaida Belova, Aleksandra Zozulevich, Galina Gladchenko, Aleksandra On the eve of the German occupation, Zinaida Logvinenko lived in Kharkov (today Kharkiv), where she worked as a nanny for the Shimanskiy family. The Germans conquered Kharkov on October 23, 1941, and the Shimanskiy family was compelled to move to the local ghetto as soon as it was established in the evacuated tractor factory on December 16, 1941. Once they were interned there, Logvinenko regularly took food supplies to the Jewish family. During one of Logvinenko’s visits to the ghetto, she told the Shimanskiys about the rumors circulating regarding the imminent fate of the Jews. After hearing this, Rozaliya Shimanskaya and her daughters, Yelena and Irina, secretly left the ghetto in early January 1942. They headed in the direction of their home but on the way, Rozaliya realized that their lives were endangered because they looked Jewish. She left her children with some people, inventing a reason why she could not take them with her and promised that her sister would fetch them in several hours. Rozaliya then returned to her former home and asked her neighbor, Aleksandra Belova, to get the girls. Belova picked up a sleigh and then trekked 15 km in the freezing cold to collect Irina and Yelena. Later that day, Logvinenko visited Belova and took Irina to her home. In the meantime Yelena stayed with Belova, a journalist who was not working during the occupation. Yelena passed her days with Belova’s 11-year-old daughter and Belova would trade clothes and possessions for food to feed her household. Yelena stayed there for only two weeks before the neighbors began to be suspicious of her presence, and she was relocated to the home of Galina Zozulevich, the mother of two young children. Zozulevich hid Yelena for one month, until Belova contacted the local underground and with their help she procured false identity papers for Rozaliya. During this time, Irina remained with Logvinenkoand her friend, Aleksandra Gladchenko, obtained papers for Irina stating that her father was a Russian and that she had been the child’s godmother at her baptism. Logvinenko and Gladchenko looked after Irina until August 1942, when Rozaliya took her to join her and Yelena in the village where they were staying. Rozaliya and her daughters then wandered together around the villages in the region until the liberation in 1943. In February 1942, after being betrayed, Aleksandra Belova was arrested. She was found guilty of assisting Jews and involvement in the underground and was executed in March of that year. When the German army retreated, Rozaliya and her daughters returned to Kharkov, where Logvinenko continued working as the girls’ nanny. She became an integral part of the Shimanskiy family and lived with them until she died. On August 20, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Zinaida Logvinenko, Aleksandra Belova, Galina Zozulevich, and Aleksandra Gladchenko, as Righteous Among the Nations.