Kyslenko (Kolesnyk) Olha

Olha Kolesnyk was born in the village of Oleksandrivka in the Odesa region into a large family. In 1936, after graduating from school, she entered the library technical school in Odesa. During her studies, she lived with her childhood friend Domna. She married a Jew, Davyd Binshtein, at an early age and moved from the village to the city with her husband and young son Volodymyr. With the beginning of the war, Olga agreed to the offer of relatives who were evacuated and moved to their apartment.

On October 16, 1941, Odesa was occupied by German and Romanian troops. On October 23, an order was issued: all Jews under threat of execution were to be in the village of Dalnyk the next day. On October 24, about 5 thousand people gathered there. A significant part of them were exterminated.

At the end of 1941, representatives of the Romanian administration conducted a population registration and found about 60 thousand Jews in the city. By order of November 7, the occupiers obliged all Jewish men aged 18 to 50 to appear at the city prison. From that day on, all Jews in the city were sent in batches to various concentration camps set up by the Romanians in the countryside, primarily to the village of Bohdanivka.

Davyd Binshtein and his son Volodymyr ended up in prison. Domna managed to ransom them for a bribe and return them home. Realizing his future fate, the man decided to escape and seek salvation from acquaintances, and Domna gave seven-year-old Volodia to Olha Kolesnyk.

Olha took care of the boy until the end of the occupation. When she went to work, she locked him in the apartment, agreeing that he would be obedient and secretly wait for her return. Domna visited her son several times, but one day the occupiers tracked her down. Olha quickly got her bearings and ordered Volodia to escape. Both women were arrested.

The boy had to wander around the city, begging, and even stealing food from the stalls at the local market. Once he was caught stealing by an Orthodox priest, Pavlo Kovalenko. Volodia said that he did not know where his parents were now, but he really wanted to eat and therefore had to wander around the market. The priest gave the boy a baptismal certificate and left it with him for a while.

Olha was later released from prison, as no evidence was found of her involvement in hiding a Jew. After that, she took care of Volodia until the end of the occupation.

After the expulsion of the Nazis, it became known that Davyd Binshtein had been shot in prison in March 1944, while Domna had survived. The trials they experienced during the war strengthened Olha and Domna's friendship for many years.

In 2000, Yad Vashem recognized Olha Kyslenko (Kolesnyk) as Righteous Among the Nations.