Kukhta Julia

Kukhta, Yuliya From 1934 on, Yuliya Kukhta worked as a nanny for the Dvorkins, doctors in the town of Beshenkovichi, in the district of Vitebsk (today Beshankovichy, Vitsebsk District). Kukhta, who was treated like a family member, lived in their home and looked after their sons, Mark (b.1934), and Aleksandr (b.1940). In 1940, the Dvorkin family moved with Kukhta to Minsk and, when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, Leopold Dvorkin, who was a military surgeon, was conscripted into the army. He was killed on the front early in the war. His wife, Sara, decided to flee to Russia with her family and Kukhta. On their way, due to the heavy bombardment, Sara went missing. Thus, Kukhta returned to Minsk with the Dvorkin children, their grandfather, Benzion Truskin, and their aunt, Anna. After they were ordered to enter the ghetto, Truskin, his two grandchildren and his daughter Anna moved there. Thereafter, Kukhta regularly stole into the ghetto in order to take them food. When she realized how difficult the conditions there were, she smuggled baby Aleksandr out and took him to her home. Kukhta looked after the infant lovingly and continued to help the others still incarcerated in the ghetto. About a year later, when Kukhta was informed that Truskin had not returned from the place where he worked as a forced laborer, that Anna had died, and that the Aktionen were intensifying. She immediately took eight-year-old Mark out of the ghetto and from then on she raised the two siblings in her home. Kukhta managed to contend with the difficult situation even when her landlord threatened to turn her in to the Germans and she was forced to move to another apartment. In order to obtain documents that stated that the boys were her sons, she baptized them and gave them her family name. Kukhta was not dissuaded by her poverty to stop harboring the brothers and she was like a devoted mother to them until the liberation, in July 1944. After the war, Aleksandr and Mark’s motherreturned to Minsk and Kukhta continued to live with the Dvorkin family and take care of the children. She stayed with them until 1973, and Aleksandr and Mark maintained a warm relationship with her even afterwards, helping her however they could. On March 7, 1999, Yad Vashem recognized Yuliya Kukhta as Righteous Among the Nations.