Kondrayev Ivan

Kondrayev, Ivan Before the war, Ivan Kondrayev lived in the city of Saratov in Russia and when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union he joined the Red Army. One month later, his unit was surrounded and Kondrayev was subsequently held in a prisoner of war camp in Trawniki (Lublin District), Poland, for five months. After he managed to escape, Kondrayev fled to the town of Rożyszcze in the district of Wołyń (today Rozhyshche, Volyn’ District), where he found work as a guard at a dairy. The dairy was located close to the local ghetto and one night Celina Bajcz, a Jewish girl, appeared at the dairy. Bajcz told Kondrayev that every night she stole out of the ghetto in order to search for food for her family and when he heard this he gave her some dairy products. In early August 1942, Kondrayev told Bajcz that the Germans were planning to liquidate the ghetto. Bajcz told her parents and they advised her to try to escape and save herself. Later that month, the Jews of Rożyszcze were massacred, among them Bajcz’s relatives. At the time, Bajcz was hiding in an underground bunker on the grounds of the dairy and Kondrayev took care of all her needs. Later, when Kondrayev found out that Bajcz’s brother was hiding nearby, he arranged for them to spend a few days together. After some time, Bajcz’s brother joined the partisans and Bajcz returned to Rożyszcze under a false identity. There, Kondrayev rented a room for her on the outskirts of town, where she stayed until the liberation, on February 2, 1944. After the war, Kondrayev married Bajcz and in 1990 the couple, along with their children and grandchildren, immigrated to Israel. On November 18, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Ivan Kondrayev as Righteous Among the Nations.