Pundik Maria

Frankiv, Tekla Pundik, Mariya Tekla Frankiv was born and grew up in the village of Dorofijówka (today Dorofiyivka Ternopil’ District). She had to help support her family from an early age. In the 1920s, she was hired as a maid by a Jewish family, the Weinbergs, who owned a drugstore in Podwołoczyska (now Pidvolochys’k). Her employers treated her fairly, and when the Germans captured the area, on July 7, 1941, and began to persecute the Jews, Tekla remained loyal to the family continuing to work for them and cheering them up, despite the dire situation. At the Weinbergs’ request, Tekla traveled to Tarnopol (today Ternopil) at the beginning of 1943 in order to smuggle their grandson, six-year-old Yuriy, out of the ghetto. She concealed the jewels that were to be used to pay the ransom in her hair. She persuaded the guard at the gate to look the other way when Yuriy walked past him into her arms. She took Yuriy to his grandparents in Podwołoczyska. On June 28, 1943, when the Jews of the town were murdered, Tekla managed to hide Yuriy. The next day he was retrieved from his hiding place by Tekla’s niece, Mariya Pundik, who came from Dorofijówka in order to take him to her home seven kilometers away. Mariya hid the boy in the loft of the threshing room and tended to him personally, as she felt she could not rely on some members of her family, particularly her young children, who might unintentionally disclose the fact of Yuriy’s presence. A month later, Tekla arrived and took Yuriy to where she was now staying with her brother in Dorofijówka. The brother, however, was not pleased by his sister’s devotion to a Jew and her determination to save him. Tekla therefore soon moved Yuriy to the granary of friends of hers and looked after him there. Afterward, he was given shelter in the attic of other friends, and moved from one refuge to another until the liberation on March 7, 1944. In the first years after the liberation, Yuriy Weinberg waited for his parents andgrandparents to come and claim him. In time, he came to understand that he was the only member of his family still alive. He continued to live with Tekla, who treated him as though he were her son and loved him above all else until her death in 1975. On October 11, 2000, Yad Vashem recognized Tekla Frankiv and Mariya Pundik as Righteous Among the Nations.