Kulakovskaya Antonina ; Daughter: Gribanova Vera (Kulakovskaya)

Kulakovskaya, Antonina Gribanova (Kulakovskaya), Vera Antonina Kulakovskaya lived in Równe, district of Wołyń (today Rivne, capital of Rivne District), with her two daughters, Vera and Nadya. The Germans conquered Równe on June 28, 1941, and, a few days later, outside her house, Kulakovskaya saw a group of Jews that had been ordered to dig tunnels. Kulakovskaya immediately approached one of the Jews and invited him to come to her home after his day’s work. Later that day, Kulakovskaya made a warm meal for Efraim Fishman and then happily asked him to come to her home every day to teach her children reading and math. Fishman became a regular visitor at Kulakovskaya’s home and he soon realized that she was involved with the anti-Nazi underground. Through this movement, Kulakovskaya found out about imminent Aktionen and on the eve of one Aktion, on December 5, 1941, she hid Fishman in the attic of her home. Fishman did not leave the hideaway for two weeks and when he emerged, he asked Kulakovskaya to accompany him to his parents’ home in the town of Dąbrowica (Dubrovytsya), north of Równe, to fetch his sister. Kulakovskaya agreed and the two made the journey together and returned to Kulakovskaya’s home with 14-year-old Riva. Fishman and his sister hid in Kulakovskaya’s home until March 1942. During this time, Vera, Kulakovskaya’s 13-year-old daughter, took care of providing the Jewish wards with food and kept their shelter clean. Later, after Kulakovskaya obtained identity documents made out in a Polish name for Fishman, he left Równe and survived the war using this false identity in eastern Ukraine. Riva, his sister, who missed her parents very much, asked to return to Dąbrowica, where she was killed with her family in August 1942. Kulakovskaya continued with her underground activities, and her apartment soon became a meeting place for the partisans. In 1943, after the Gestapo had already apprehended her once, armed policemen and Germans broke into her home,found weapons there, and arrested her and her daughters. Two Soviet partisans that were in her home at the time were shot in a gunfight and her daughters were then put in prison. Kulakovskaya was brutally interrogated in front of her children but she still did not reveal any information about the partisans that had met in her home. In December 1943, 29-year-old Kulakovskaya was executed. Fishman survived the war and later immigrated to Israel. On July 14, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Antonina Kulakovskaya as Righteous Among the Nations. On September 10, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Vera Gribanova (née Kulakovskaya) as Righteous Among the Nations.