Mykhalskyi Vanda, Yosyp, Paraska and Lidiia

During the Nazi occupation, Vanda Mykhalska and her relatives helped the Jewish Kobernyk family escape execution.

On the eve of the German-Soviet war, Oleksii and Lidiia Kobernyk worked at a local school. The husband taught physics and mathematics, and his wife taught Russian language and literature. Their son Anatolii was three years old in 1941. After the occupation of the settlement, Lidiia and the boy were sent to the Kodyma ghetto, while Oleksii was in Odesa at the time.

In the urban-type settlement of Kodyma (now the city of Kodyma, Podolsk district, Odesa region), Lidia realized that she was pregnant again. The conditions in which she had to live were terrible and did not at all contribute to preserving the pregnancy. When all food supplies ran out, local residents began to bring food to the Jews. They also gave them clothes, shoes, and drinking water from a well. Many slaves managed to escape to the villages of Chechelnyk, Balta, Budei, Savran, Bershad and other places that they considered safe. Some died, and some, thanks to good people, found the salvation.

Lidiia Kobernyk was also lucky enough to reach her native village, but she was afraid to go home. The Jewish woman knocked on the door of the young widow Vanda Mykhalska. She had once worked with Vanda's husband, who was repressed in 1938. The woman responded to the request, let the exhausted Jewish woman and her child into the house, fed them, and warmed them. While wandering through the forest, little Tolik frostbitten his feet and could not walk for almost a month. Relatives began to help Vanda – her late husband's brother, Yosyp Mykhalskyi and his wife Paraska. They informed Oleksii Kobernyk that his wife and son were alive and in relative safety.

In the winter of 1942, he moved the family home, where twins Halia and Olenka were soon born. Halia has lived only two months, Olenka two years, until Lidiia’s next arrest in January 1943. At that time, Oleksii was collaborating with Soviet partisans and underground fighters and began looking for ways to free his wife from the ghetto in the city of Rybnytsia (now the Republic of Moldova). Tolik managed to hide in time in the house of Yosyp Mykhalskyi and his 15-year-old daughter Lida took care of the child. In March 1943, Lidiia Kobernyk managed to escape from the ghetto thanks to her husband’s friends, but within a few days she learned that Oleksii had been executed by the Nazis. Four months after his death, the woman gave birth to a daughter, Tamara.

After the war, she continued to work as a teacher and maintained friendly ties with her saviors throughout her life.

In 2009, Yad Vashem recognized Vanda Mychalska, Yosyp and Paraska Mykhalskyi, and their daughter Lidiia as Righteous Among the Nations.