Maria Prudska
Maria Prudska, born in 1930, and her mother Kateryna Prudska lived in the village of Korsunka, Kherson region. The family owned a small private house. Next door there was a home of Kateryna’s friend’s mother Agafiya Myronenko.
Agafiya’s daughter Maria Plotkin, Ukrainian, was a school teacher and lived in the neighboring village of Bolshie Kopany with her Jewish husband Avraham Plotkin and their two small boys Oleg and Vladyslav. Maria м loved when her mother’s friend was coming to the village as she had the possibility to play with her boys.
At the end of December 1941, when Kherson region was occupied by Nazi for 5 moths already, Maria Plotkin came to her mother’s home with 5-year old Oleg and 3-year old Vladyslav.
Maria shared with Kateryna that her husband had joined the Red Army and she was denounced as the wife of a Jewish Communist and the mother of two Jewish kids straight after Nazi headquarters been established in the village, where she used to live with her family. Thus, she believed it’d be safer her boys in Korsunka.
Germans were coming to the village from time to time to collect food. Locals knew that Maria’s kids were half Jewish but did not report, but for one local policeman who believed that Jewish boys shouldn’t live with others. At the same time appointed by Nazi village headman even informed Plotkin, when the Nazis or policemen were to appear in the village for Maria to hide children. In these cases the boys were sent to the Prudsky family, who hid Oleg and Vladyslav in the attic, the cellar, or on the bank of the river. Another safe place for boys was the home of Maria’s cousin Domna Medina and her 11-year-old daughter Larysa. Domna lived on another bank of the Dnieper River in the village of Lvovo. Her private house had an ideal hidden double roof that gave the possibility to create a shelter.
Maria, Kateryna, and Domna had to work every day, thus boys were cared by Kateryna’s daughter Maria and Domna’s daughter Larysa.
This women’s friendship that lasted all their lives saved the boys who survived the Nazis occupation. The Nazis were kicked off from the region in September 1943.
Avraham returned from the front after the war and returned to his boys and wife.
On January 21, 2014 Yad Vashem recognized Kateryna Prutska, her daughter Maria Prudska, Domna Medina, and her daughter Larysa Glushchenko (Medina) as Righteous Among the Nations.