Shidlovskaya Lubov ; Daughter: Yekaterina ; Daughter: Voytsekhovskaya Yelena (Shidlovskaya)

Shidlovskaya, Yekaterina Shidlovskaya, Lyubov Voytsekhovskaya (Shidlovskaya), Yelena During the German occupation, Yekaterina Shidlovskaya, in her 30s, lived in Dubno, Wołyń (today Rivne District) and worked in a German factory. On May 26, 1942, the day that the Jews of one of the two ghettos in Dubno were being taken to the death pits, Shidlovskaya passed through a street down which the Jews were being marched. Among them she noticed Fanya Skvirskaya, an acquaintance, who beckoned her over. Shidlovskaya approached her and Skvirskaya handed over her six-year-old daughter Zhanna. Shidlovskaya took the child by the hand and quickly fled the area. Shidlovskaya hid Zhanna in her apartment in the town for a few days, and on her first day off, Shidlovskaya took the child to her mother, Lyubov Shidlovskaya, in the village of Dorohostaje Małe (Mali Dorohostayi) not far from Dubno. Shidlovskaya told her mother that Zhanna was Jewish but the other people in her village were informed that Zhanna was a Ukrainian orphan from the eastern area of the country. Zhanna, who was born in Kiev, spoke Russian well, and Ukrainian less so, but was not hidden from the neighbors. When the Germans or the police conducted house searches, Zhanna was locked in the basement. Occasionally, Lyubov took Zhanna for a few days to visit her other daughter, Yelena Voytsekhovskaya, who lived with her sons on an isolated khutor in the village of Maślanka (Maslyanka). Zhanna stayed with Lyubov until the liberation in April 1944 and throughout her time in hiding she was treated as a family member. A few weeks before the liberation, Yekaterina Shidlovskaya fled to Czechoslovakia and she later moved to the United States. Her mother and sister stayed in Ukraine and were both persecuted by the Soviet authorities after the war because they were considered to be kulaks or “wealthy farmers.” In order to avoid deportation to Siberia, they moved to eastern Ukraine and Zhanna was placed in an orphanage inDubno. In 1945, Zhanna’s father’s sister found her and took her to Moscow. Zhanna (later Zemskova) eventually moved to the United States. In 1995, she located Yelena Voytsekhovskaya’s sons and renewed contact with them. On December 16, 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Yekaterina Shidlovskaya, her mother, Lyubov Shidlovskaya, and her sister, Yelena Voytsekhovskaya, as Righteous Among the Nations.