Mokryi Vasyl and Olena

Vasyl and Olena Mokryi lived in the village of Nova Ushytsia in the Khmelnytskyi region. During the Holocaust, they saved a Jewish girl from death.

For the Novoushytsia ghetto, the German occupiers allocated a place in the area of ​​Bazarnaia Square and Staraia Poshtova Street. Jews from the village itself, as well as from the villages of Zamikhiv, Slobidka, Shcherbivtsi, Brailivka, Kucha and Pesets were driven there. In August 1942, a selection was carried out in the ghetto: everyone whom the Nazis considered unfit for physical work (children, exhausted women, elderly people) was sent to be shot. On the outskirts of Trykhovyi Forest, a few kilometers from the village of Nova Ushytsia, more than 1 thousand Jews were executed.

The victims of the crime included Bronislava Bytynska and her ten-year-old son Eduard. During the transfer to the forest, the woman managed to lay down her eight-month-old daughter, wrapped in rags, at the entrance to the cemetery. The baby was picked up by one of the local residents and brought to the childless couple Mokryi, who warned them that it was a Jewish child. Everyone knew Vasyl and Olena, they taught at the local school. But despite the danger, the couple decided to hide the girl. When the opportunity arose, the Mokryis registered their paternity. The girl was named Halyna and raised as a daughter.

Halyna learned about her true origin only after the death of Vasyl and Olena. In 2000, when she was already 58 years old, an elderly Jewish woman who knew this story told the woman the circumstances of her adoption, so the rescued woman began to research her family history. It turned out that her biological parents Bronislava and Borys Bytynskyi with their son Edyk tried to evacuate to the east. After an unsuccessful attempt to leave, Borys was mobilized as a doctor into the Red Army. He did not return from the war. Bronislava was pregnant and gave birth to a girl in the ghetto in January 1942.

Halyna Vdovina (Mokra), feeling grateful to her adoptive parents for saving her life, submitted a statement in recognition of their feat.

In 2012, Yad Vashem honored Vasyl and Olena Mokryi with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.