How easy it can be to mistake evil for good, especially in troubled times. Yet the truth always finds its way into the light. In our story, that is exactly what happened.

In the village of Olhopil in the Vinnytsia region stood an ordinary house. There was nothing remarkable about it–it was wooden, with a slightly crooked fence and windows overlooking a dusty street. The owner of the house was Isaac (Itsik) Toivievich Fabrikant. He was born here in Olhopil in 1886 and worked as an artisan. Little is known about his life before the war. It was Isaac who would be destined to save his fellow villagers during the most terrible years of their lives...

Jews had lived in Olhopil for generations. Largely thanks to their hard work and enterprise, in the nineteenth century the unremarkable district town developed into a local economic center: it had four factories, two hospitals and a district school, several hotels, printing houses, watchmaking workshops, and even a photographic studio. There were also three synagogues and a Jewish religious school, a cheder. During the Russian Civil War, the district town suffered greatly from anti-Jewish pogroms, yet on the eve of the Second World War, 660 Jews still lived there. With the establishment of Soviet rule, Olhopil–by then classified as a village–became the administrative center of the district of the same name.

On July 26, 1941, Olhopil was occupied by German and Romanian troops. The village found itself within the territory placed under Romanian civilian administration, in the so-called Transnistria Governorate (known as Pridnestrovie in the Russian-language tradition). Some Jews managed to flee before the occupiers arrived, but most remained and thus found themselves in mortal danger.

The Romanian occupation authorities turned the Jewish quarter into a ghetto. It held around one hundred families of local Jews, as well as prisoners deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina–approximately seven hundred people in all.

In November and December 1941, many of the ghetto prisoners died in a typhus epidemic. But long before that, in August 1941, the occupiers carried out their first punitive action, which claimed the lives of around seventy Jews.

With the establishment of the “new order,” fifty-five-year-old Isaac Fabrikant found himself in a position that could only be described as caught between a rock and a hard place. He was immediately summoned to the commandant’s office and informed that he had been “elected in absentia” as head of the local ghetto. Grigorescu, the commandant of Olhopil, was greedy–Isaac would soon have to “confiscate” gold and valuables from his fellow villagers for him–but he was by no means foolish: Isaac Fabrikant was respected in Olhopil for his experience and good judgment. People would obey a man like him, and if they did not... so much the worse for them.

Isaac returned home bewildered, if not outright desperate. How was he supposed to conduct himself in this new “position” that had fallen like a heavy burden on his shoulders? Protect his people as far as possible. But he could not show excessive leniency–Grigorescu’s wrath would surely cost many lives. Small and vicious, the commandant of the Olhopil gendarmerie was a veritable monster: when beating his victims with a whip, he would even jump up if the person he was torturing was taller than he was. Perpetually enraged and spraying saliva as he shouted, Grigorescu threatened execution for every mistake. Every day he demanded girls from the ghetto, whom he brutally raped.

And it was to such a monster that Isaac now had to answer. From then on, every morning began with a sickening feeling: he desperately did not want to do his “job,” but the prospect of looking his fellow villagers in the eye was even more terrifying.

Isaac went from house to house collecting gold and valuables. He knew that if he failed to collect them, the commandant would order searches. And then there would surely be rapes, murders, torture... No–better that he do it himself. Isaac took rings, earrings, watches–the last possessions people had left. More than once, he had to fight back tears at the sight of crowds of hungry children huddled with their parents in cramped huts…

He organized labor details: clearing snow, unloading barges at nearby docks, repairing roads. Every day, he led people out to work, knowing they would curse him for it. But if he did not, Grigorescu would have them all shot.

He collected money for burials. Thousands of deported Jews passed through Olhopil. Many died right in the streets from hunger, disease, and cold. Grigorescu, who was terrified of epidemics, threatened: "If I see even one corpse, I'll shoot the entire ghetto."

He also managed to register several prisoners of war as ghetto inmates–men whom the occupiers intended to execute. Summoning his courage, Isaac told Grigorescu, “They are Jews. They are from Bessarabia. I know them.” The commandant looked at him in surprise, his lips curling into a contemptuous smirk. “The bastard suspects!” Isaac thought. He suspects, but for now he is satisfied with my work and is therefore willing to turn a blind eye to such a “trifle.” The prisoners of war Isaac saved would survive the occupation and, after the liberation of Olhopil, return to the front.

At night, Isaac often could not sleep, tossing and turning for hours on his old bed...

But there was another side to his life as well–one that only a handful of people in Olhopil knew about. Late at night, after giving the agreed signal with a coded knock, people–mostly young men–came to the Fabrikant family home on the outskirts of the village. Their leader was an underground resistance fighter, Isaac’s son Mikhail. His group had established contact with the Zhdanov Partisan Detachment. In his father’s house, by the light of a single splinter of burning wood, Mikhail and his comrades discussed future operations. It was here that they first repaired and then listened to the only radio receiver in the village that had survived, learning the latest reports from the front; they drafted and copied leaflets by hand, which were then distributed throughout Olhopil and the surrounding villages. Isaac supplied the partisans with fuel and made sure that the meetings in his home went unnoticed.

It was obvious that Commandant Grigorescu and his men were far more concerned with enriching themselves than with fighting the local underground. Yet resistance to the occupiers remained a deadly undertaking. Mikhail Fabrikant was arrested twice and brutally tortured. By some miracle, he managed to escape both times. Mikhail never betrayed his father or his comrades.

During those terrible days when his son was in the hands of the punitive forces, Isaac gave no outward sign of his feelings. As usual, he supervised the work details and carried out Grigorescu’s orders. In the evenings, returning home past the Gestapo building, he heard muffled moans, no less terrifying for being subdued. His son endured truly hellish torment. But what must his father have endured...

In the winter of 1943–1944, Grigorescu and his gang began to grow nervous. The commandant was constantly irritable and frequently burst into angry shouts. Isaac felt that he was balancing on a knife’s edge: it seemed that one careless word, one poorly executed order, and the commandant’s full fury would descend upon the ghetto prisoners. Then, with the arrival of spring, the people of Olhopil heard the echoes of distant thunder–but it was no storm. It was artillery fire! On March 22, 1944, Soviet troops entered the village. Grigorescu and his henchmen fled–none of them was eager to die for Hitler’s increasingly uncertain prospects and those of Germany, its ally, nor did they want to lose everything they had looted in Olhopil...

On that memorable day, people poured into the streets, weeping and laughing. They embraced the soldiers, kissed the ground, prayed... And Isaac stood on the threshold of his house, unable to believe his eyes.

He felt the enormous burden that had weighed on him for so long, barely allowing him to breathe, finally lift. Isaac was desperately tired and had aged as though ten years had passed. But the most important thing was that it was all over. Or was it?..