Yasinski Yakov & Yasinskaya Aleksandra

Yasinskiy, Yakov Yasinskaya, Aleksandra Yakov and Aleksandra Yasinskiy were a young couple in their 30’s living in Krivaya Balka (now Kruva Balka), a suburb of Odessa. At the beginning of 1942, they were approached by one of their acquaintances from Slobodka, another Odessa suburb, with a proposal to take in a four-year-old Jewish girl. The childless Yasinskiys jumped at the opportunity. The next day, they paid their acquaintance a visit and saw Malvina Vladova, a little girl with short black hair and huge dark eyes. When the ghetto had been established in Slobodka, Malvina had been confined together with her mother, Raya, her big sister, Fanya, and her grandmothers and grandfathers. Her father, though, had been conscripted to the army. When the deportations of Jews from Odessa to the Transnistria camps began, Raya had left Malvina with a Russian woman – the acquaintance of the Yasinskiys – fearing that a four-year-old would not be able to make the journey on foot. The woman who took Malvina promised Raya to keep the child safe, but after a while realized that she was not able to deal with the difficulties connected with hiding a Jew. Without much hesitation, Yakov and Aleksandra took the girl to their home. Malvina’s name was changed to Lidiya. Over the course of time, the girl got accustomed to her new name and home, and to her new parents who loved her dearly. After some time, apparently the result of someone’s denunciation, the Yasinskiys received an order to report to the police station, where they were interrogated about the identity of their little houseguest. The Yasinskiys claimed that Lidiya was their biological daughter who up until that time had been raised by Aleksandra’s relatives. As proof, the Yasinskiys baptized the girl on June 14, 1942, and thus received an official document confirming that she was indeed Lidiya Yasinskaya. Fortunately, the baptism satisfied the Romanian police commandant and the Yasinskiys were left in peace. After theliberation in April 1944, “Lidiya” remained with her new parents, since she assumed that no one from her family had survived the war. But then, in the summer of 1944, her father came back from the Army. He would have never found out that his little daughter was still alive if not for one neighbor who happened to have made a visit to Krivaya Balka and who had recognized Malvina playing in the street. Emanuil Vladov reclaimed his daughter from the Yasinskiys. That same year, the Yasinskiys adopted another orphan and raised that child as their own. Malvina and her father remained befriended with them for many years after the war. On April 14, 2002, Yad Vashem recognized Yakov and Aleksandra Yasinskiy as Righteous Among the Nations.