Kovář Vojtĕch & Kovářová Marie (Kubištová)

Kovář, Vojtěch Kovářová, Marie Vojtěch Kovář and his wife Marie (née Kubištová), of Czech origin, had a farm in the village of Novosilky, in the Równe region in Volhynia District, Poland (now, Ukraine). They had six children, aged one to eleven. In July 1942, the Nazis murdered Rehor Dub, a dental technician and his wife, Klara Dub, a dentist, along with the annihilation of the remaining Jews from the Równe Ghetto. Their daughter Anna was handed to a family friend Prof. Panek, who was a teacher at a Russian high school. Afterwards, another friend of the Dub family and a friend of Vojtěch Kovář, Dr. Brik, a surgeon, arranged a new hiding place for Anna with the Kovářs in the village of Novosilky. The Kovář family hid Anna mostly in a barn, though sometimes in a large crate covered with corn husks in emergencies, or amid the crops in the field, or among the family’s children. After someone informed to the authorities, the S.S. carried out repeated searches at the Kovář home. They found nothing, but took farm animals for themselves. If they had found Anna, the entire Kovář family would have been executed and the farm burned. The Kovářs hid Anna without asking anything in return, based on their deep Christian faith. They used the gold coins that Anna brought mainly to buy the silence of people who noticed the dark-haired girl, telling them that she was a Georgian orphan who was left in their care by German soldiers. In addition to Anna, the Kovářs hid other Jewish refugees and Russian soldiers on their farm for short periods. In 1947, the Kovářs moved with their children to Czechoslovakia, Marie’s native land, and took Anna with them, where she grew to adulthood and married. On June 25, 2000, Yad Vashem recognized Vojtěch and Marie Kovář as Righteous Among the Nations.