Vyvrotski Roman & Vyvrotskaya Anna

Vyvrotskaya, Anna Vyvrotski, Roman In the spring of 1943, Anna Vyvrotskaya, a mother of five children in the village of Rata in East Galicia (now Ukraine), found herself caring for a two-month-old Jewish baby girl. It is unclear whether the baby was brought to Anna specifically or whether the child was abandoned by the desperate parents. But she knew that the child was Jewish, born to a couple by the name of Schlettner from the nearby village of Rawa Ruska. Despite the danger of hiding a Jewish child, Anna and her husband Roman took the baby in, and named her Ola. Years later, one of Anna’s daughters recalled that once a German soldier staying in their house prompted Anna to confess that the baby she found was Jewish; however, he did nothing more than tap her on the shoulder and tell her she was a good woman. The Vyvrotskis cared for the girl until the town was liberated in 1944. One day a young man by the name of Froim Post appeared at their home and told Anna that Ola was the biological daughter of friends of his, who had been murdered during the Holocaust. He successfully persuaded Anna, who by then had six children of her own, that he and his new wife Regina would take good care of Ola. Anna agreed to part from the girl, and Ola moved with her new family to Poland, and in 1950 immigrated to the United States. While she always knew that during the war she had stayed with a non-Jewish family, she had no idea that the Posts were not her biological parents. Only in 2004 did Froim Post reveal to his daughter that she had been adopted. Her name at birth had been Golda Schlettner. Meanwhile, the Vyvrotskis never stopped wondering what became of Ola. In 1957 they were visited by David Post, Froim Post’s brother. He showed them a picture of Ola, then a high school student in the United States, and told them that Ola was unaware of her being adopted. Only in 2008 were Anna and Roman’s children able to reach Ola (now Farkas) through a contact who knew Ola fromRawa Ruska, and reestablish their connection. Currently they are exchanging letters. On 14 June 2011, Anna and Roman Vyvrotski were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.