Meyer Vasili & Anastasia

Meyer, Vasiliy Meyer, Anastasiya Vasiliy Meyer, a German, and his Ukrainian wife, Anastasiya, lived in Zhitomir (today Zhytomyr). Before the war, the Jewish Grips family lived in their neighborhood. On July 9, 1941, the Germans conquered Zhitomir and before long the local Jews were ordered to vacate their homes and move to the ghetto. Initially the Jews were permitted to leave the ghetto to buy food but this was soon forbidden and the Jewish ghetto residents were essentially sentenced to starvation. After a few weeks, the Jews were marched out of the city in groups and shot to death by some pits that had been dug on the outskirts of Bogunia. Gitla Grips and her young son Leonid were among the last Jews to reach the pits and just seconds before they were shot, Grips pulled her son into the pit before they were actually hit by bullets. That night, the mother and child, covered in blood, clambered out from among the corpses. Grips then noticed that her son was wounded in his leg, and so headed with him back to Zhitomir, to the Meyers’ home. The Meyers hid Grips and her son in their home for a few weeks, until Leonid’s leg healed. Then, because the Germans had conquered Kiev and were rapidly heading eastward, Grips, whose husband was serving in the army, decided that it was safest to leave the city. Through an acquaintance, she acquired identity papers made out in a Russian name. She dressed her circumcised son in girls’ clothing and, in 1943, they managed to cross the frontline in the region of Kharkov (Kharkiv). After the war, the Gripses returned to Zhitomir, where they continued their friendship with the Meyers. On September 13, 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Vasiliy and Anastasiya Meyer as Righteous Among the Nations.