Olena Omelchenko

In the beginning of the summer of 1941, young couple Kostyantyn and Olha Omelchenko with two‑year‑old daughter Olena moved into a just‑built house in a new neighborhood of Kyiv. Around them, there were completed or partially built buildings, most not yet inhabited.

In the end of August, two weeks after the Nazis occupied the city, Olha noticed a light in the window of the construction workers’ shed near their home, and sometime later saw its residents: a woman with two small children and an old woman.

One day, the new neighbor knocked on the Omelchenkos’ door and, introducing herself as Hanna, asked for some milk for the children. Olha not only poured her a pot of milk but also tied a bundle of bread and potatoes. Moved, Hanna cried and told her story.

The woman’s name was Ethel Oppenheim. On August 29, her family, like other Jews of Kyiv, went to the collection point at the intersection of Melnykov and Dehtyarivska Streets. Shortly before they reached the point, Ethel realized that they were being taken to their deaths, took her youngest children, Sasha and Manya, in her arms, and began to leave the crowd. She and her mother Sima managed to escape unnoticed to some lane, and only then noticed that Ethel’s eldest son Myron wasn’t with them. They waited for him until the night, hiding not far from their own house, and when they lost the hope of his return, went out to look for shelter where no one knew them.

They only had documents that confirmed their Jewishness, and no means of support. Finding himself at the construction site, the Oppenheims occupied an empty construction workers’ shed where they hid until hunger forced them to start looking for food.

Olha became a true savior angel for these people. She and Kostyantyn cared for Ethel’s family: they brought them self-made furniture, an iron stove, blankets, kitchen utensils. Cooking, Olga always brought half the food to their Jewish neighbors. After some time, Ethel began to recover from the tragedy she survived, and started caring for her family more. In early 1942, she managed to obtain forged documents, which allowed her to live legally. Ethel became a farm laborer, receiving food as payment for her work.

The Omelchenko family continued caring for them. Once, Kostyantyn bribed for silence an occupation policeman who noticed that four‑year‑old Sasha was circumcised. Thanks to their constant support, the four Jews survived until the expulsion of the Nazis from Kyiv on November 6, 1943.

On July 3, 2000 Yad Vashem recognized Kostyantyn and Olha Omelchenko as Righteous Among the Nations.