Oderii Oleksandra, Pavlov Fedir, Maryna and Volodymyr, Pavlova (Oderii) Mariia

Oleksandra Oderii and her 15-year-old daughter Mariia lived in a private house in the town of Balakliia in the Kharkiv region. She earned a living by selling vegetables grown on her own plot at the market. During the Nazi occupation, in the spring of 1942, Oleksandra was approached by a woman looking for housing for herself and her three sons. The landlady gladly agreed and offered to rent her summer kitchen, as it was an additional source of income. Nataliia moved in with her sons to live with the Oderii. Over time, the women got to know each other better, and she admitted that the father of her children – nine-year-old Mykhailo, four-year-old Vasylii, and two-year-old Hryhorii – was a Jew, Volodymyr Ikhelman. Her husband was conscripted into the Red Army at the beginning of the war, and she had to flee her home because her neighbors were hostile to the Jewish family.

When Nataliia began to run out of money to pay the rent, Oleksandra became concerned about the fate of her tenants and allowed them to live there for free. But one day, one of the neighbors asked her if she knew that her tenant’s children were Jewish. The woman managed to avoid a direct answer, but the issue of safety became very urgent. She decided to turn to Fedir and Maryna Pavlov for help, and they agreed to take in the Jewish children.

Nataliia and her sons hid with the Pavlov family until the Nazis expelled them from the city on February 6, 1943. In order to feed four more people, the family sometimes had to go hungry. Fedir and Maryna's 14-year-old son, Volodymyr, was forced to pick potatoes and other edible roots in the fields outside the city to survive.

In 1944, Fedir was mobilized to the front, where he died.

After the war, in the 1950s, the Ikhelman family settled on the Crimean Peninsula, and Volodymyr Pavlov married Mariia Oderii. The families maintained friendly relations.

In 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Olexandra Oderii, Fedir, Maryna, Volodymyr and Mariia as Righteous Among the Nations.