Pelin George & Pelina Varvara

Pelin, George Pelin, Varvara George and Varvara Pelin were farmers living in the village of Malayeshty (today Mălăieşti), not far from Tiraspol, in the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in Ukraine (from 1940 in the Moldavian SSR [today Moldova]). The area was included in Transnistria, since September 1941, and was under Romanian control. In March 1944, the Pelins gave shelter in their home to a stranger, Lev Bruter, a young Jew who was a native of the town of Causanii Vechi in Bessarabia, Romania. Bruter came to the Pelin home after fleeing from a convoy of young Jews being deported to Germany, that had left the Domanevka labor camp, in Transnistria, where Bruter had been held throughout the occupation. The Pelins hid Bruter in their cellar, and for nearly a month, until the area was liberated, they saw to all his needs. The Pelins did not share their secret with their neighbors, and only their two adult children knew about their act of rescue. These sons, in their early 20s, were also forced at times to hide with Bruter in the cellar, particularly when the Germans were searching the village for local young men to send to Germany for forced labor. When the village was liberated, in April 1944, Lev Bruter enlisted in the Red Army, and returned to Malayeshty only in the 1950s, but he did not find his rescuers, the Pelins, there. After searching for a long time, Bruter found Varvara Pelin and her sons in Kishinev, where the family had moved after George Pelin’s death. From then on, Bruter kept in touch with his rescuers, even after he immigrated to Israel. On November 6, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized George and Varvara Pelin as Righteous Among the Nations.