Voyevoda Nikita

Feilen, Jean Baptist Voyevoda, Nikita One of the Soviet POWs arriving at the Buchenwald concentration camp in March 1944 was Emil Alperin, b.1922 in Odessa. He had been captured by the Germans on July 7, 1941 and, for almost three years, managed to remain in a POW camp as Dimitri Basmanenko. However, after three unsuccessful attempts to escape he was sent to the concentration camp in Germany. In June 1944, after having worked at various forced labor tasks, he was assigned to the laundry under the command of the veteran Communist Jean Baptist Feilen, b.1904, generally known as "Matis". After finding out that Emil, alias Dimitri, was a Jew, Matis decided to help him survive in the camp and hid him in the cellar and storerooms of the laundry. Another prisoner of war joined in these efforts, the young Ukrainian Nikita Voyevoda, b.1924, who took care of concealing Emil in one of these hiding places whenever the Nazi officers came near the laundry, occasionally covering him with bundles of dirty laundry. Most of the time, Emil worked in the laundry loft where a group of young prisoners were in charge of drying the clothes. Usually the SS did not go up there, however one time, one of the camp officers noticed Emil and the following day began interrogating Matis. The latter did not give him away. He declared that the prisoner he had seen was hurt during work and was sent to hospital from which he has not returned. Matis thus led the officer to believe that the prisoner had perished. He then redoubled his efforts to hide Emil, since now under no circumstances could he be seen. Only with the help of Jean Baptist Feilen and Nikita Voyevoda did Emil Alperin manage to survive until the American army liberated the camp on April 11, 1945. Emil Alperin remained in contact with Nikita Voyevoda and also with Jean Baptist Feilen until the latter died in 1991. On November 5, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Jean Baptist Feilen and Nikita Voyevoda as Righteous Among the Nations.