Mokryi Vasiliy & Mokraya Yelena

Mokryi, Vasiliy Mokraya, Yelena On August 20, 1942, in the city of Novaya Ushitsa, Ukraine, a selection took place in the ghetto: all Jews deemed unfit for labor were rounded up and sent to what the Germans and Ukrainians called “Palestine,” which turned out to be a killing pit in a nearby forest. Among the selected were Bronislawa Bytinskiy, Edik (her 10-year-old son), and her infant daughter. In desperation, as they made their way out of town, they placed the baby, diapered in rags, near the entrance to a Catholic cemetery. She was discovered by one of the many onlookers lined along the side of the road watching the Jews being marched to their deaths. This onlooker brought the infant to Vasiliy and Yelena Mokryi, a childless couple who worked as teachers in the local elementary school. The Mokryis were aware of that the child was Jewish and even knew her parents’ identity, but despite the danger they raised her as their own child throughout the war years and beyond. For 58 years Galina Vdovina grew up in Novaya Ushitsa having no idea she was not biologically related to her parents. The Mokryis passed away in the 1980s without telling their adopted daughter the truth. In 2000 an elderly Jewish woman decided she could not take the secret to her grave. She told Galina the circumstances of her adoption, and other witnesses, both Jewish survivors and Mokryi family members, corroborated her words. Galina’s Jewish identity had apparently been an open secret among Novaya Ushitsa’s few surviving Jews. Exploring further, Galina discovered that her parents had attempted to escape to the east but had been unable to do so, that her biological father, Boris, a gynecologist, had been drafted into the Red Army following the town’s occupation in July 1941 and never returned, and that she was born in the ghetto shortly thereafter, in January 1942. Her biological mother and brother were indeed murdered the same day Galina was placed at the cemetery’s entrance. On June 26, 2012, Vasiliy and Yelena Mokryi were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.