Synenko Yevgeniy & Yulia (Pokora)

Synenko, Yevgeniy Synenko (née Pokora), Yuliya Elhanan Landman was born in 1933 in Stanislawow (later, Ivano-Frankovsk), the only son of Dr. Hersh Landman a lawyer, and his wife Pepa (née Anderman). With the beginning of the German occupation, Dr. Landman was among the first victims – he was murdered on August 4, 1941 together with many other members of the city’s intelligentsia. Pepa and her son survived a number of Aktions in the Stanislawow ghetto, until Pepa managed to procure papers under an Aryan name. In November 1942, she fled with her son to Lwow. She lived in Lwow openly while Elhanan had to be hidden. When the situation turned worse, Pepa decided to flee to her native town of Buczacz, where she hoped to find her parents still alive. One Sunday morning in the spring of 1943, they arrived safely to Buczacz. Very few Jews remained by then in the town, and Pepa’s parents, Saul and Sara Anderman, were not among them. Someone advised her to inquire where they might be at the local grocery since its owner, Yevgeniy Synenko, was known to be on friendly terms with Saul Anderman. Posing as a Pole, Pepa went to the Synenkos home, where Yevgeniy’s wife, Yuliya, welcomed her in. Somehow Yuliya understood that Pepa was the Andermans’ daughter, and the latter confided in her. Pepa was happy to hear that her parents were alive, hiding in the forest with other Jews and receiving provisions from the Synenko couple. She asked Yuliya if it was possible for her son Elhanan to join them in the forest – the boy was circumcised and could not live openly. She was told that it was impossible for security reasons. Instead, Yuliya took the boy to her native village of Bremiany. With the help of Yuliya’s brother, Mr. Pokora, a hiding place was found in the attic of a carpenter workshop. Yuliya and her husband paid all the expenses for his maintenance. Two more Jews joined Elhanan sometime later -- a tailor by the name of Isaak and Dr. Jozef Kornbluh. Since the attic hadbecome too small for the three of them, Mr. Pokora (Yuliya’s brother) excavated a hole inside the workshop’s cellar. It was so small that the people inside could only lie down. They spent their days sleeping and at night they would climb up and stay in the workshop. On January 24, 1944, a carpenter came running into the workshop urging the Jews to flee because their hiding place had been discovered. They started running towards the forest and lost each other. When Elhanan understood he was all alone, he started looking for a path to the Strypa River that he knew would lead him back to Buczacz. It took him more that 24 hours to reach the town. He recognized the Synenkos’ home and went strait inside. Yevgeniy and Yuliya could not keep the boy themselves - their grocery shop was in the same building as their living quarters, and as such too much in the public eye; besides, the Synenkos had three little children who might disclose Elhanan’s presence. So Yevgeniy took the boy, hidden under the straw in his cart, to his father’s farm, situated on the outskirts of Buczacz, off the road to Czortkow. He stayed there, hidden in the stable’s loft, until the first liberation of the area on March 28, 1944. There were also two Jewish women disguised as Ukrainians working at that farm; besides, one day Yevgeniy Synenko brought a group of Jews that stayed for a while until he found them a safer shelter. During the short period of the first liberation, some of the Jews went back into town. Almost all of them were caught and murdered when the Germans recaptured Buczacz on April 3. On April 16, 1944, Yevgeniy Synenko took Elhanan to another hiding place where the boy joined a few other Jews. That was the last time he saw his rescuer. After the final liberation of Buczacz by the Red Army, on July 21, 1944, Yevgeniy was arrested and deported to Siberia, where he apparently perished. His wife Yuliya left for a town in Poland within its new borders. Elhanan found his mother, whohad survived under a false identity. After a short stay in Lwow, they started their way to the west and in 1948 settled in Montevideo, Uruguay. Pepa Landman corresponded for some time with Yuliya until the letters stopped coming. In 2008 Alejandro (Elhanan) Landman made a trip to Buczcacz and indicated the house where his rescuers had lived, but did not succeed in finding exact information about their fate. On October 12, 2008, Yad Vashem recognized Yevgeniy Synenko and his wife Yuliya (née Pokora) as Righteous Among the Nations.