Maslo Ivan & Teklya

Maslo, Ivan Maslo, Teklya Rosa Boritz (née Kohl, b. 1929) was the youngest child of Froim Altman and Telka Kohl. Her father passed away in 1932, and at the outbreak of the war she lived with Yaakov (b. 1926), her older brother, and Bela (b. 1925), her older sister, and their mother. Her hometown of Sokole, in the Lwow (today Lviv) district of Ukraine, had only three Jewish families. When the Germans seized control of the region in the summer of 1941, the families were sent to the ghetto in the neighboring town of Kamianka Strumilova. Yaakov and Bela were conscripted into forced labor. By the following year Yaakov had been murdered, and Telka escaped the ghetto with her remaining children and returned to Sokola, living in an abandoned house. For a while this arrangement was relatively safe because the Germans did not think to revisit the small town. The Kohls worked for their neighbors, Ivan and Teklya Maslo, earning enough to survive. One day, while Bela and Rosa were working in the Maslos’ garden, the Germans suddenly conducted a search in the village for Jews. Their mother, Telka, was captured and killed. When the Maslos heard about this, they immediately instructed the girls to hide in a cornfield and by doing so saved their lives when the Germans searched their home. Following Telka’s capture, the Maslos took full responsibility for the girls. But their situation remained precarious: the Germans relentlessly searched for Jews who might be hiding outside the ghetto. One day they were working in the yard, when the Maslos’ 7-year-old son, Pyotr, rushed over, warning them that the Germans were approaching. The girls quickly ran and squeezed themselves into barrels so tiny their pursuers did not bother searching them. These near misses prompted the Maslos to take preemptive measures. Ivan acquired a summons sent out by the local authorities that said that the recipient was to report for forced labor in Germany. Under the assumed name Anna Karaskewich, Bela was drafted in this manner and sent to work at an airplane factory in Wiener Neustadt. Shortly thereafter, Rosa escaped to Germany in the same way, but over time she lost track of her sister’s whereabouts. After the war Rosa returned to her hometown of Sokola and lived in her old home. She eventually married and had a son. In 1957 she received word that her sister, Bela, was alive and living in Canada. Rosa and her family joined Bela in Canada a year later. This emigration ended the communication between Rosa and her rescuers’ family, but it was restored in 2006, when she made contact with Pyotr Maslo. On January 29, 2013, Ivan and Teklya Maslo were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.