Volko Nudelman

Volko Nudelman was born in 1909 in the town of Berhsad (in present-day Ukraine), in the family of a woodworker. He finished school in his native town, and was then enrolled in the Faculty of Sanitary and Hygiene of Odessa Medical University. After graduating from it, Nudelman was sent to the small town of Zhovten (present-day Petrovirivka) near Odessa, where he worked as a medical officer.

Following the Nazi invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, Nudelman was immediately dispatched to the front lines. He was authorized to organize medical aid to the wounded, often under enemy fire. In October 1941, during one such foray to retrieve wounded soldiers, Volko himself sustained a serious leg wound. However, he recovered and resumed his duties.

In July 1942, Volko served on the North Caucasian Front as chief regimental medical officer. In one of the numerous battles that were fought there, the lives of 50 persons were saved, and Nudelman played an active role in this operation. He not only supervised the administration of life-saving treatment to the wounded, but also treated them personally.

From March 1943, Volko Nudelman served as chief physician in one of the border regiments. While there, he had to deal with an outbreak of typhoid fever, but was unable to halt the spread of the infection.

In the course of the war, he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd Class, as well as medals. Nudelman met V-E Day in Vienna and stayed there for another year after the end of the war.

In summer 1946, he returned to Lvov, and was sent to the settlement of Ivano-Frankovo, where he took part in the military campaign to suppress the Banderite (Ukrainian separatists) insurgency. Apart from treating Red Army soldiers, Nudelman captured some insurgents.

Later, he worked at the Border Guard Hospital in Lvov, heading the sanitary and hygiene department.

In the years of late Stalinist antisemitism – especially during the "Doctors' Plot" of early 1953 – Volko Nudelman, fearing imminent arrest, always carried a bag in which he had packed all the basic necessities for prison. In the end, he was not arrested, but demoted from department head to an ordinary medical officer.

In the mid-1950s, his daughter was made to fail the entrance exams to the Lvov Medical University three times in a row. After this experience, the family moved to the island of Sakhalin, where antisemitism was absent. There, Nudelman worked for several years at a Border Guard Hospital. He later returned to Lvov and, after being discharged from the army, worked as a therapeutic cardiologist at a city clinic.

Volko Nudelman died in Lvov in 1975.