This year marks 66 years since Kirovohrad was liberated from Nazi occupants. In spite of the distance in time, the memories of the cruel war keep haunting its participants and eyewitnesses. Among them is Israeli resident Alla Ihnatieva, whose letter speaks about simple people, Old Believers Smyrnovs from Kirovohrad, who saved her and other Jews from death during World War II, risking their own lives.
It is an easy guess what danger the Smyrnovs and their family faced for hiding at least one representative of the disgraced Jewish nationality. In fact, they were hiding five people, who, under the law, had to be wearing white bands with the Star of David on their sleeves. These were no needles in a haystack, but living people hunted by policemen day and night. They hid for a total of 2.5 years at their rescuers’ place.
Only a lucky incident saved Ihnatieva and her mother from death: the child was born with blond hair and blue eyes, which made her look different than other Jews. During the mass execution, one of the Fascists, seeing this difference, pushed the girl and her mother away from the pit, where hundreds of the executed people were lying.
Alla recalls: “Out of several thousand Jews shot that day, only two of us escaped. We hid wherever it was possible: in the underground, in half-destroyed empty apartments, we suffered starvation and cold. Once we hid near the market, and my mother saw Zinaida Smyrnova, a mother of one of her pupils (before the war mother worked as a schoolteacher), and called her. In the evening the woman brought us home, and her entire big family (including 10 children) approved of her deed.
“The family was headed by elderly Semen and his wife Ahafia. They shared the house with children and their families – their son Kuzma, his wife Antonina, and their three little children; their daughter Zinaida (her husband was repressed) with her five children, and another daughter, Yevdokia Sorokina. None of the neighbors knew that they were hiding us.
“All of them shared the last piece of bread with us, a plate of borshch or potatoes (we lived illegally, so we did not receive any cards to get bread). We lived in one of the back rooms and did not go outside for the entire during of occupation. Kuzma and Antonina dug a secret pit-room in the yard, where we descended during the raids. If we did not have time to hide, Antonina would put my mother in bed, cover her with rags, and tell the Germans that we had typhus. They were very much afraid of typhus, so they left quickly.
“When policemen came to the yard, grandmother Ahafia distracted them with the help of a bottle of moonshine, after which they often left without even looking into our room.
“Zinaida pretended that I was her daughter, because I resembled her own five children very much. To prevent Germans from quartering, they taught children to gather in one room when they came — the Fascists did not like noisy and crowded houses, so they went away.
“Our rescuers were absolutely unselfish. With the help of their acquaintances they found a passport for my mother, for which they had to give a very expensive present – an 18-century icon in silver framing, which was a family relic.
“On Jan. 8, 1944, Kirovohrad was liberated from the Nazis, and my mother and I could walk the city streets without fear. However, the fact of living on the occupied territory was for a long time a dirty spot in our biographies.
“As far as I know, on The Day of the mass execution, two more Jewish girls came to the Smyrnovs; they hid them and then sent to some village. At the beginning of the occupation, the merciful women of this family boiled buckets of potatoes and porridge and brought them to the POW camp. The Smyrnovs also rescued a prisoner of war, the Jewish soldier Mykhailo Shyfrisov — they pretended that he was their Tatar step-son. After he recovered, they helped him meet the partisans. He continued to fight, lived in Dnipropetrovsk after the war ended, and frequently came to visit the Smyrnovs, regarding them as his relatives.
“In all the years that have passed since the war ended, we have stayed friends with the Smyrnovs, and after the older members of the family died, we have continued our friendship with their children.
“All of them were recognized the Righteous among the Nations, and their names were engraved on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.”
As an epilogue we may add that according to the Israeli laws, the Righteous among the Nations and their children and grandchildren have the right to reside in Israel and enjoy all the benefits of this country. However, none of people mentioned in Ihnatieva’s letter has taken advantage of the opportunity.
“We did not do this for honors,” the older members of the family said when they were alive. Their descendants, who live in Kirovohrad, Svitlovodsk, Moscow, Mukacheve, and other cities agree with this opinion. They ask: “Would you act differently if you were in our place?”
Below are the names of our rescuers:
1. Semen Smyrnov
2. Ahafia Smyrnova
3. Kuzma Smyrnov
4. Zinaida Smyrnova
5. Antonina Smyrnova
6. Yevdokia Smyrnova
7. Matvii Makarov
