Lavrenov Ivan

Ivan Lavrenov Ivan Lavrenov was born in 1909 in the vicinity of Utena, Lithuania. Before the German-Soviet war he was a farmer and worked on his own land. At the beginning of the German occupation, Lavrenov hid two runaway Russian POWs at his farm. The fact became known to the police, and he was arrested and sentenced to death. On the way to the shooting pit, however, he managed to escape. He went into hiding for a while and then moved to Latvia, where he hoped the police would not find him. A friend helped him to obtain an Ausweiss (job permit), and find work as a carpenter in the Castle of Daugavpils. In 1942, the castle premises were turned into a camp for incarcerated Jews. Lavrenov became acquainted with some of the prisoners. One of them, Etta Zilberman (née Fonareva), aroused his special compassion. Her husband had been shot at the very beginning of the occupation and her four-year-old daughter had died in the ghetto of illness and hunger. Lavrenov began bringing food to Zilberman and her cellmates. On the eve of an Aktion, he hid Zilberman and another Jewish woman, Dora Kobash, in a lumber storage room. That night he led them out of the castle, and placed them for a short while with some friends. When the friends could no longer hide them, he took the Jewish women out of the city. The journey was very risky, but the three managed to reach the Ilukste train station, where Kobash parted from her rescuer and went to join the Soviet partisans. Lavrenov and Zilberman continued on their way until they found a large agricultural estate that was looking for seasonal workers. Lavrenov presented Zilberman as his sister, Nadezhda Lavrenova, a war refugee from Pskov region of Russia. The hosts believed them, and Zilberman worked at the estate until the liberation, while Lavrenov returned to Daugavpils. After the war, Lavrenov and Zilberman got married. In 1946, their son Boris was born. Ivan Lavrenov passed away in 1984; Etta in 1993. The fate of DoraKobash remains unknown. On October 7, 2007, Yad Vashem recognized Ivan Lavrenov as a Righteous Among the Nations.