Vovk Fedor & Shkandel Yelizaveta

Vovk, Fyodor Shkandel, Yelizaveta Mizina, Mariya Fyodor Vovk and his wife, Yelizaveta Shkandel, were teachers at a school in the city of Nikopol, in the Dnepropetrovsk District (today Dnipropetrovs’k District). On August 17, 1941, the city was occupied by the Germans, and on October 3 and October 5, 1941, a massacre of the Jews was carried out there. Sara Bakst, also a teacher by profession, married to a Ukrainian and mother of two small children, was a friend of Vovk and his wife. Concerned about her fate, Vovk got in touch with Sara’s husband, and learned from him that Sara had survived the Aktionen and was in hiding with her mother, Yelizaveta Bakst, and her two-year-old nephew Vladimir, the only members of the Bakst family who had managed to escape the massacre. Vovk and his wife decided to help Sara and her relatives. At first they took Sara’s older son, Viktor, into their home, and then appealed to their friend Mariya Mizina who agreed to hide Sara in time of need. For Yelizaveta Bakst, Vovk obtained papers in a borrowed name and sent her to friends in the village of Varvarovka. There she worked as a cleaner in a school throughout the entire German occupation without anyone knowing she was Jewish. Little Vladimir lived in the same village and the family that looked after him did not know he was Jewish either. In the meantime, Sara hid with Mizina for three months. During the day she remained in the cellar and at night went up into the apartment to get warm and bathe. Finally, Vovk managed to obtained false papers for Sara and helped her leave Nikopol for the rural countryside. Sara settled in a remote village and only Vovk and his wife knew her whereabouts. When she had settled there, Vovk brought her son Viktor to her. Throughout the years of the occupation, Sara’s younger son Aleksandr remained with his Ukrainian father elsewhere. After the liberation, on February 8, 1944, the survivors returned to Nikopol, and for many years stayed in touch withtheir rescuers. On July 12, 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Fyodor Vovk, his wife, Yelizaveta Shkandel, and Mariya Mizina, as Righteous Among the Nations.