Mamantova Yelena

Mamantova, Elena Elena Mamantova (b. 1889) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, but during World War II she lived in Kārsava, Latvia, with her two adult daughters. Mamantova, an obstetrician, had many Jewish friends in town and believed that people are created equal. Once persecuted during the Russian Revolution, she came to the defense of the Jews and was even arrested when the Germans found her in the company of Jews. They threatened that she would share the fate of her Jewish friends; however, she was released through the strenuous efforts of her daughter. Despite being known as a friend of the Jews, Mamantova came to the aid of Rachel Edelman Bankovich, a Jewish woman married to a non-Jew, Alfred Bankovich (he was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1983). Shortly after the Germans established a ghetto in Kārsava, Bankovich managed to hide his wife and her niece behind a false wall in a room in his house. On the night of August 15, 1942, Alfred came to ask for Mamantova’s help because Rachel was in labor. Giving no thought to her own safety, Mamantova followed him to the house. She entered the hiding space behind the wall, where she attended Rachel as she gave birth to her son. Since the baby’s crying might have given everyone away, Bankovich turned to his good neighbor, Helena Spiridovich (recognized in 1995), who had given birth to a daughter two weeks earlier. Helena agreed to take in both Rachel and the baby so that the mother could continue nursing him. At one point the Germans wanted to draft Alfred, who was of German origin, into the army. The good doctor came to his aid and supplied him with a medical exemption, declaring that he suffered from various ailments. Thus he was able to continue to provide for those Jews under his care. In July 1944, when the Red Army was at the outskirts of Kārsava and the town was being bombed from the air, Bankovich smuggled his wife and her niece outside the city, where they remained until the liberation. They were reunited with their baby, and they kept in touch with Mamantova after the war. In 1944 Mamantova and her family moved to the United States, where the story of her heroism was passed down from generation to generation. On December 19, 2011, Yad Vashem recognized Elena Mamantova as Righteous Among the Nations.