In March 1942, as deportations from Rava-Ruska to Bełżec began, an old acquaintance — Pinchas Graf — appeared unexpectedly at Kateryna’s farm. Arriving in the middle of the night, Pinchas pleaded: “Kateryna, take my Ruza. They won’t let any of us live!” Kateryna immediately agreed, understanding that very soon there might be no one left to save. “Let me take your son too,” she whispered. But Pinchas waved his hands in protest: “No! He’s circumcised — they’ll know right away he’s Jewish!”

The next night, Pinchas brought Ruza to the farm. No one in Potelych knew the girl. Through the village elder — who was well paid — Kateryna obtained a birth certificate with a photo for Ruza. To the locals, Kateryna and Yakov said the girl was a relative from Rava-Ruska, also with the surname Kleban. They claimed she was an orphan who had lost her home and was now living with them. Occasionally, Ruza’s parents came to visit her at night, but before long, they vanished without a trace. Her younger brother Tzvika, just four years old, also disappeared.

Even after the Soviet confiscations, the Klebans’ household still had two cows, two horses, chickens, and pigs. Ruza learned to milk the cows, care for the poultry, and perform other farm chores. She became close friends with Maria, Kateryna’s daughter, and together they picked berries in the forest, worked in the garden, and played with neighborhood children — none of whom suspected the true identity of the Klebans’ “relative.”

Ruza had barely lived a few weeks in Kateryna’s home when a terrible event occurred. Near the farm, since before the war, lived an elderly Jewish seamstress known by the nickname “Gopalikha.” Kateryna often commissioned her to sew clothes for herself, her daughter, and her husband. Gopalikha, the mother of three beautiful daughters, was a skilled dressmaker with a lively sense of humor. To little Maria she would say: “Little one, when you grow up and get married, I’ll sew your wedding dress.”

The Germans sent Gopalikha and her husband to the ghetto, but their daughters managed to hide in a wooded area not far from the Kleban farm. Kateryna and Yakov built a camouflaged forest shelter — known as a malina — for the girls, nearly impossible to detect.

One night, one of Gopalikha’s daughters left the forest shelter and made her way toward the Kleban farm. She had nearly reached the house when a local Polish man suddenly appeared. Recognizing the young Jewish woman, the man grabbed her in a death grip and dragged her to the gendarmerie. The Nazis, enraged, subjected the girl to a brutal interrogation — tearing the earrings from her ears and beating her beyond recognition. Hearing her screams, the Klebans immediately sent their daughter to hide Ruza. The girl led her friend into the vegetable garden and pointed to the most concealed place she could find: “Get in where the chickens are — in the shed!” Ruza quickly slipped into the chicken coop, and Maria threw planks over the opening to disguise the hiding spot. The Germans didn’t thoroughly search the Kleban house, and Ruza Graf wasn’t found. But the beautiful young Jewish woman who had been arrested was never seen again. Her two sisters also disappeared from their hiding place in the forest malina.

Under Nazi terror, every day was a possible death sentence for Ruza and the Kleban family. Harboring a Jewish girl meant constantly putting their entire household at risk. At one point, driven to despair, Kateryna begged Ruza to leave and try to find another place to stay. But by morning, she couldn’t bring herself to let the girl go. She simply couldn’t send a child off into the unknown. And little Maria declared that if Ruza left, she would leave too.

On Sundays, Kateryna would go to church, as local custom required — but she never took Ruza with her. This hurt the Jewish girl deeply: Maria got to attend services with her mother, but she did not. She was also made to wear a scarf all day to hide her curls. But Kateryna had no other choice, not after what had happened with the girl captured by the police — and not with the neighbor woman constantly watching from behind the fence. The nosy old woman spied on the Kliebans day and night. Had it not been for the birth certificate Kateryna had obtained from the village council — which the neighbor knew about — disaster would have struck much sooner.

And yet, one snowy Sunday, they came for the girl. Most likely, the neighbor had finally informed the police that the Kliebans were sheltering a Jewish child under the pretense of her being a relative. Thugs showed up at Kateryna and Yakov’s house. “That’s it, they’re going to kill us all now…” Kateryna whispered in a broken voice as Ruza was led away. She sent her daughter running to warn her husband, who was out tending the livestock far from home. Maria told him not to return and to hide wherever he could.

The next day, three Germans came back to the farm in a horse-drawn sleigh — and this time, they took Kateryna herself.

Her daughter, Maria Yakovlevna Hnidets, recalled how the Germans interrogated her mother and grandmother through the night. Then, after returning them to the farm, they took Maria with them. The officer in charge wore polished black boots. The girl was brought to a dark basement room. A Polish translator greeted her and, in her presence, told one of the officers: “You’ve got to put real pressure on this child — she’ll break.” Then he turned to her sharply and asked: “Dzietzko, powiedz mi wszystko! Wszystko, wszystko! Is your little girl a Jew?”

“No!” Maria answered, standing in the middle of the room. The question was repeated several times. Each time, she gave the same answer.

The man smirked and offered her a few candies: “Try this — it’s delicious. Tell the truth and you’ll get more.”

Maria shook her head and repeated: “She’s our relative. She’s not Jewish.”

The translator immediately turned and struck her across the face. Maria was thrown against the wall and hit her head hard.

“Dzietzko, confess! Just tell us and I won’t hit you again!” he barked.

Maria felt dizzy, but she remembered how her grandmother Ksenia, before sending her off, had touched her lips with a motion — like locking them with a key. To save Ruza, and herself, and everyone she loved, she had to keep her mouth shut.

“Biy, ale ne yudash!” — “Hit me, but I won’t betray her!”

“You’re lying!”

“No!”

The sadist pulled the girl toward the door and forced her to stick her finger between the door and the frame. Slowly closing it, he demanded a confession. The pain was unbearable. Maria took a deep breath and screamed: “Kill me! Go ahead — you can kill me!”

He struck her again. Maria collapsed to the floor and lost consciousness.

The same Germans brought her home — convinced she had died. Maria had a skull fracture. The nuns from the local monastery had to care for her for a long time before she recovered.

A day or two after Maria’s interrogation, Ruza returned to the Kleban home on her own. According to the girl, what saved her life was her blonde hair, blue eyes, and the Christian prayers that Kateryna had taught her by heart. The Germans knew she wasn’t truly related to the Kliebans, but they couldn’t prove her Jewish origin. When asked how she had ended up in Potelych, the girl said she had been traveling by train, got off to ask for food, became lost, and was taken in by the family as an orphan. The bribed village council head also helped — he assured the Germans that a little Ukrainian girl was living with the Kliebans, and that the accusation against them was false.

In July 1944, Rava-Ruska and the surrounding area were liberated by Soviet forces. Kateryna’s husband, Yakov Mykhailovych, was drafted into the army, and she remained at home with her ailing mother, elderly father, Maria, and Ruza, now the head of the household. Kateryna Andreevna was deeply worried about her husband, but there were also moments of joy. News arrived that the two daughters of Gopalikha — who had disappeared from the forest malina — had survived and were serving as nurses in the Red Army. While their unit was stationed in Lviv, they visited the Kliebans, bringing precious soap and food, which helped Kateryna keep the family afloat.

Soon, other visitors came to see Kateryna Andreevna. One day, near the very end of the war, there was a knock at the door. Three young Jewish men stood on the doorstep and told Kateryna that Ruza’s parents were waiting for her in town. Although she had grown deeply attached to the foster child, Kateryna was overjoyed for the Graf family and let the girl go with the strangers.

But when Ruza arrived in Rava-Ruska, she was given devastating news: none of her family had survived. However, a childless Jewish couple was willing to take her in. Unfortunately, Ruza and her new foster mother did not get along from the start. The woman didn’t understand what the girl had endured and failed to grasp the trauma of a child who had lived in constant fear for years. Ruza refused to stay with the new family, and the young men who had taken her from the Kliebans came up with another plan.

These men were connected to the Aliyat HaNoar movement, which helped smuggle Jewish children westward — and eventually to Palestine. Thanks to their efforts, Ruza Graf was evacuated to Munich.

In the Bavarian capital, Ruza attended a Jewish school, but she never envisioned a future in Germany. Most Jews were trying to emigrate to America or Canada — Ruza, however, dreamed only of Eretz Israel, the world’s only Jewish homeland. After much pleading, she was finally added to a list of children slated for illegal immigration to Palestine. Soon, she was told to pack her things.

The group set out from the town of Landsberg am Lech in a truck covered with canvas and driven by Jewish soldiers who had fought on the side of the British. It included both children and adults. The escort forbade anyone to speak and ordered everyone to pretend to be mute. The snow-covered Alps were crossed on foot in pairs — so each person could help their companion if anything went wrong.

In Italy, Ruza spent nearly six months in hiding, waiting to be repatriated. Just as she was losing hope, she was suddenly summoned to a meeting and told, with great ceremony: “Get ready — we’re going to Eretz Israel!”

That night, the group was secretly taken aboard a ship in Metaponto, in southern Italy. The vessel was an old wooden schooner called The Ghetto Fighters. For three hours, the passengers were ferried to the ship in eight inflatable boats. Despite being overcrowded, the ship was run with strict order and divided into separate zones: a sleeping area and a dining area. Out of the 1,457 repatriates on board, 37 were children.

Two weeks later, Ruza Graf arrived in Palestine. However, the British did not allow anyone to disembark. They transferred all the passengers onto a British ship and deported them to Cyprus. Ruza spent two months on the Mediterranean island before finally receiving a certificate permitting her entry into Palestine. What followed was another sea journey, a stay at the Atlit detention camp, and then a march inland, which ended with a command: “Do you see the Sea of Galilee? Run along the path straight toward it.”

In Eretz Israel, Ruza began studying at a school located in Kibbutz Degania. In August 1949, she became one of the founding members of Kibbutz HaOn near Ein Gev. There, she worked as a nurse and later managed the local medical clinic. In HaOn, Ruza — now called Shoshana, in the Hebrew style — met her future husband, David Lap, a native of Lithuania. The couple had three children.

In the 1960s, Ruza Graf was able to trace Kateryna Kleban and her daughter Maria. At the time, maintaining correspondence with foreign countries was dangerous, so when Kateryna received a letter from Ruza, she was too afraid to reply. After the war, when the Soviets reoccupied Western Ukraine, repression intensified even more than before. When Kateryna’s husband finally returned from the front, she was once again forced to part with him for many years. Branded a kulak because his house had a tin roof instead of straw, the war veteran Yakov Kleban was arrested and deported to Siberia. When he eventually returned home — seriously ill — he worked briefly as a stableman at the local collective farm before passing away.

Only in the final years of the Soviet Union were Maria Yakovlevna Hnidets’s daughter Halyna and her husband Mykhailo able to resume correspondence with Ruza Graf. Ruza traveled to Rava-Ruska, where, for the first time in decades, she reunited with her childhood friend and rescuer, Maria Hnidets. By then, Maria was already a pensioner. Her heroic mother, Kateryna Kleban, had long since passed away. The brave woman died in 1982. She had firmly refused to move to Rava-Ruska to live with her daughter and remained on the remote farmstead where she had once hidden Ruza Graf — until her final day.

Yad Vashem recognized Kateryna Kleban as Righteous Among the Nations on March 22, 1998. The name of this Ukrainian heroine from Potelych is now inscribed on the Wall of Honor at the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem. In 2018, Ukrainian journalists produced a short documentary film about the story of Righteous Kateryna Kleban. Her daughter, Maria Yakovlevna, still lives in Rava-Ruska to this day.

04.04.2023



Bibliography and Sources:

Memoirs of Maria Yakovlevna Hnidets, recorded by her son-in-law Mykhailo Kovalchuk, “Electronic Archive of the Jewish Heroes Project”
Documentary film about Kateryna Kleban: “The Word of the Righteous” (authors: Margaryta Yakovleva, Ivan Fedorich, and Oleksandr Zubko)
Memoirs of Shoshana Lap (Ruza Graf)
Memoirs of Shoshana Lap’s husband, David Lap