Senega Yekaterina

Senega, Yekaterina Yekaterina Senega was living in the town of Żólkiew (today Zhovkva, L’viv District), and was working as a nanny and as house help for the family of Samuel Mandel, who was a wood merchant. Samuel and his wife, Sheindel, had four children, the youngest of which was born in 1935 and was named Dina. After Żólkiew was occupied on June 28, 1941, the German authorities had prohibited non-Jews from working for Jews. Yekaterina was forced to leave the Mandels’ employ and go seek out another position. However, she still came frequently to visit with the children, bringing them fruit and sweets. She continued making her visits even after the Mandels were incarcerated in the local ghetto, which had been established in December 1942. During the typhus epidemic that spread among the ghetto inhabitants, Sheindel and son, Zelig, died. On March 25, 1943, the day that the liquidation of the ghetto started, Dina’s older sisters, Lusia and Ruzia, pleaded with one of the guards to let Dina run away. Surprisingly, the guard allowed the seven-year-old to sneak away. Later in the evening, she came to the home of Yekaterina where she hid until morning. Yekaterina knew that she would not be able to keep the black-haired, black-eyed girl safe if they would stay in town for the town was constantly being subjected to police searches. They took a train to Lwów and from there to Przemyśl. In a small village near Przemyśl, Yekaterina found her sister whom she had not seen for many years. She “confessed” to her that Dina was her daughter which had been born out of wedlock, and to make matters worse, the father is Jewish. Yekaterina’s sister agreed to keep the child. Until the liberation of the area in July 1944, Dina stayed under her care. Yekaterina would come to visit her on holidays and when she did, they related to each other as mother and daughter. After the liberation, Dina returned to Zolkiew where she found out that none of her immediate family had survived. A yearlater she parted with her rescuer and together with the remnants of the Żólkiew Jewish community moved to Poland within its new borders. Yekaterina died a few years later, in 1953. Dina (by then Schweizer) eventually settled in Luxembourg. On October 10, 2004, Yad Vashem recognized Yekaterina Senega as Righteous Among the Nations.