Cholhan Liubov (Hirniak)

Cholhan (Saj, née Hirniak), Luba The Ukrainian Luba Hirniak and the Jewess Mina Schulster were good friends and neighbors, living with their families in the same building on Lelewela Street in Tarnopol. In 1938, Luba married Dr. Tadeusz Saj while her friend Mina went to Lwow to study sewing and design. In 1939, Luba’s son was born, and a year later her husband was arrested by the Soviets and apparently executed. Mina went back to Tarnopol in 1941 and soon after the city was occupied by German troops. In the course of time, Mina was incarcerated in a ghetto, with her mother, Hana, sisters, Sabina and Malcia, and Malcia’s infant son. Every day, Mina would go on work detail outside the ghetto, in the German Police premises, where she washed floors and bathrooms. Sometimes she managed to steal some food leftovers from the kitchen, mostly potato peels, and bring them back with her to the ghetto. The thin soup her mother made from those peels was her family’s only food for days. One evening, after returning from work, Mina found the shack where her family was living, empty. During her absence, her dear ones were deported to the Belzec extermination camp. Mina felt lonely and afraid. She does not remember how she managed to get out of the ghetto and go to her friend Luba’s house. Luba was not at home, but her housekeeper, Stefa, who knew Mina from her previous visits, let her in. Later Luba returned, having come from the funeral of her mother-in-law, Helena Saj. The documents of the deceased were still in Luba’s bag; she was supposed to hand them over to the municipal registration office. Instead, Luba changed the surname on those documents to Hasaj, and gave them to her friend Mina. They decided that Mina should go to Germany as a forced laborer, using her new assumed identity. A couple of days later, Mina went to the railway station, dressed as a peasant, accompanied by Luba. A train arrived, full of workers being taken from Eastern Ukraine to Germany, with astop in Tarnopol. Some workers got out to get water, and when the conductor whistled for the train to move on, Mina hurried back with them into the train. Three weeks later, Stefa, Luba’s housekeeper, received a letter from Linz, Austria, signed by Helena Hasaj. Mina wrote that she was working as a streetcar conductor, living in constant fear that someone might identify and denounce her. Luba, who had never traveled farther than Lwow, felt she had to go to Linz to lend support to her friend. She sent Mina a short note that she’d be coming to see her soon; leaving her son to her parents’ care, she boarded the train to Linz. Their meeting comforted Mina and gave her the strength to go on. Luba had to go back to Tarnopol because the Soviets were approaching Eastern Galicia. Once there, she picked up her son and fled back to the west. Until 1949, Luba stayed in the Mittenwald DP camp in Bavaria, waiting for immigration papers to Australia. However, one day she was called by an American immigration officer, who announced that Mina Schulster (by then Berkowitz) was alive, living in the U.S.A. with her brother, Jack it was her brother. They found ways to bring Luba and her son George to America. The friendship between Mina (Nina) and Luba (Cholhan (by her second marriage) continued in their new homeland. On June 1, 2009, Yad Vashem recognized Luba Cholhan (née Hirniak) as Righteous Among the Nations.