Vilchinski Pavel & Vilchinskaya Alexandra

Romanova, Olga Vilchinski, Pavel Vilchinskaya, Aleksandra Olga Romanova administered a library in the neighborhood of the Voikov Factory in the city of Kerch (Crimean Peninsula). After the fall of Kerch to the Germans, on November 16, 1941, her neighbor, Yelena Sulla, asked for her help in view of the pending expulsion of the city’s Jews. Olga hid Yelena and her daughters – Vera 13, Mariya 8, Zinaida 5, and Tatyana 3 – in her attic. Yelena’s husband was conscripted into the army and later fell in battle. She also hid other Jewish neighbors – a boy, Vladimir Antonov, and his grandmother – in the silo. The two families remained in hiding for about a month with Olga, who supplied them with food and water. When Vladimir Antonov ventured out of the silo a month after arriving, one of the neighbors called the police. The result was the murder of the boy and his grandmother by German troops in an antitank ditch outside the city – the place where approx. 7,000 Jews from Kerch and its surroundings had been murdered from the end of November to the beginning of December 1941. Fearing that the same fate would befall the Sulla family, Olga moved them to her neighbors and good friends, the Vilchinski family. Pavel and Aleksandra Vilchinski had a small apartment and could not hide five people. The fugitives were therefore taken to the loft of the Vilchinskis’ building and hid there until the first liberation of the city, on December 30, 1941. During this period, the Vilchinskis provided the Sulla family with food and warm clothing. At night, Aleksandra Vilchinskaya took the girls into her home to sleep. The Vilchinskis’ two young children keep the secret and helped their parents take care of their wards – particularly because Pavel Vilchinski was an amputee and could not get to the loft. After the first liberation of Kerch, the Sulla family returned to their apartment – but not for long. Yelena Sulla’s firstborn son, who was a Soviet partisan, was able to evacuate his dearones deep into the Soviet Union before the city was recaptured in May 1942. After the war, the survivors returned to their home and maintained close ties with their benefactors. On May 14, 2000, Yad Vashem recognized Olga Romanova and Pavel and Aleksandra Vilchinski as Righteous Among the Nations.