Bank of Portraits / Krymer (Haleta) Lidia, Haleta Ivan

Krymer (Haleta) Lidia, Haleta Ivan

When the German-Soviet war began, Ivan Haleta and his 14-year-old daughter Lidia lived in the village of Viktorivka in the Odesa region (now Mykolaiv region). After the occupation of the region in August 1941, the Nazis established a labor camp near the village for the Jewish population. Sympathizing with the prisoners, the father and daughter occasionally sent food products there. On one of these days, they accidentally met Frida Sushon. Gratefully accepting the assistance of the strangers, she told them that she was a doctor and that she, along with her elderly mother and sons Leonid and Sergiy, was in the camp. They were brought from Odesa. The Galetas promised to help the Jewish family, but the next time they couldn't find Frida. From other camp residents, they learned that the Sushon family had been sent to the Akmechetka camp (which existed from the end of 1941 to March 1944 in the territory of Domanivka district. The prisoners were held in a former collective farm pigsty, and the able-bodied ones were used for agricultural work. Inmates died of hunger, and a total of 4,000 Jews were killed in the camp).

Ivan Haleta decided to bribe one of the guards and negotiated the return of all four members of the Sushon family to the village of Viktorivka. From then on, Lidia regularly brought food to Frida and her family: garlic, corn flour, and cakes. When in March 1944, Nazi forces were retreating, there was a threat of the physical destruction of the camp residents. Frida witnessed several murders and wanted to save the children. At her request for temporary shelter for the family, the Haletas immediately responded. At night, they relocated the Jews to their home.

After the war, the Sushon family returned to the city of Odesa. They maintained friendly relations with their rescuers. Lidia Haleta married a Jewish man named Naum Krymer, a former prisoner from the Viktorivka camp.

On December 29, 1992, the Yad Vashem recognized Ivan Haleta and Lidia Krymer (Haleta) as the Righteous among the Nations.

Odesa

Holocaust Museum in Odesa

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