Valentina Sokolova (Poloz)

Marya Poloz (later Repina) lived in Zhitomer with her daughters – Tamara and Valentina. In wartime they earned for life exchanging goods on food, or ment and sewed clothes.

One night September 1941 they heard quiet knock outside the window. Sheindel Shteinberg was stading with her daughter Clara near the door. Clara was Tamara`s schoolmate. When gossips, that getto would going to be liquidated, started to spread, they decided to escape.

For a couple of days Poloz family sheltered them in the house. That time the destruction of getto was really going, and searching for jews, who were hiding, was very intensive. To prevent the risk for life of Marya and her daughters, Sheindel and Clara decided to leave the Poloze`s guest house and go to Kyiv – it seemed to them, that it would easier to survive is a big city, where nobody knows them.

Before Shteinbers have gone, Valentina gave to Clara her documents, which sooner helped her to survive the occupation. Sheindel spoke Ukrainian with thick Yiddish accent. So she gave herself out as mute.

After a couple of months mother and daughter Shteinbergs returned to Zhitomer. Marya Poloz and her daughters agreed to hide them again. After Shteinbers decided to go to Berdichev, where Clara could find a job. They were living in Berdichev until the town had been liberated in January 1944.

After the war Shteinbergs  kept in touch with Poloz, until girls got married, then communication stopped for some time. Only in 1990-s Clara (in that time Zaltsman),has already been living in Israel, found Valentina and renewed communication.

31 August 1996 Yad Vashem has honoured Marya Poloz (Repina) and her daughters Tamara Romanova and Valentina Sokolova with honorary rank «Righteous Among the Nations».