27/01/2020
Today, January, 27 is The International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The memorial ceremony was held in Minsk, Belarus. Among the guests there were WWII participants, Holocaust survivors, Deputy Minister of foreign Affairs of Belarus Anatoly Dopkunas, Ambassador of Israel in Belarus Alon Shogam, the chargé d'affaires of the United States Jennifer Moore, rabbis, and many others. One of the most significant moments of the ceremony was the presentation of the medal of the "Righteous of the Peoples of the World" to the Liohkis family. Their story is the following.
In October 1941, when the whole country was under the occupation, a mass extermination of Jews took place in the village Parichi, Svetlogorsk district, Gomel region, Belarus. When the crowd of the inmates was chasing by the Germans and the policemen to the outskirts of the village, one of the women pushed her son out of the crowd and ordered him to hide in a small forest nearby. His mother promised him to join him later, and ordered him to sit there quietly. It is not known what would have happened with the boy if two residents of the neighboring village Vysoki Polk - Fedora Boskina and her 14-year-old step-daughter Darya – had not seen him. According to their memories, they saw a frightened Jewish boy crying under a pine tree. The boy's name was Srol Plotkin, his father was in the war, and Darya knew him as the studied together with her sister. He was very cold, as he was waiting for his mother under the tree for a long time, and for some reason she didn’t come... The little Srol did not know what happened on the outskirts of the village...
Fedora and Darya took the child to their house, where they hid the boy under the floor, and gave him the local name - Pavel. When Fedora got scared during German checks, she was encouraged by her teenage step-daughter Darya, as the girl said that Srol was already their family member and it was impossible to leave the boy alone. So they all lived together until Darya was taken as a laborer to germany to work. After WWII Darya came back to her village and saw that Srol still lived in their house. Almost at the same time the father of Srol-Pavel came back and took his son. For a long time the reunited family lived in the city of Bobruisk, then they left for Israel.
About 60 years after the events described, Srol came to Belarus to see his native village. And found out that Darya still lives there! It was a very emotional and warm meeting.
Now Srol has its own family, children and grandchildren. He is alive, as well as the youngest of his rescuers - Darya (90 years old). And for saving the little Srol on January 27, 2020, on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the "Righteous women of the peoples of the world" medal was accepted by her son, Anatoly Liohki, on behalf of his mother.
"At that time you didn't think about heroism. But saving a person is a great thing, I think. Just imagine how many people died in Holocaust. This boy was saved. And many people were born because he survived, many generations were born, and many new branches followed", – said Anatoly Liohki – Darya’s son.
We’re proud of our people!
Materials are taken from open public sources: naviny.by, belarus24.by, by.mir24.tv
