Mariya Podolyan and her mother Sofya Shapovalova

Mariya Podolyan lived in the city of Kirovograd with her younger sister Valya. Valya had a school friend called Mariya Tishkovskaya, a Jewish girl whose family lived in the same building as the Podolyan sisters. When the war broke out and the Germans were approaching Kirovograd, Podolyan sent her younger sister to relatives in a village. On August 4, 1941, the Germans invaded Kirovograd and, on September 30, they ordered all the Jews to gather at a specific assembly point.

That night, an unknown policeman came to Podolyan’s home and told her that her sister was at the local police station and that she should come and collect her. Podolyan went to the police station with Valya’s identity papers, but found Tishkovskaya there instead. When Tishkovskaya’s family had been sent to the death pits, she had claimed to be Ukrainian and that she was there by mistake. She gave the police Podolyan’s name and address, as if they were sisters, and Podolyan, who caught on immediately, gave Tishkovskaya Valya’s papers and took her home, as if she was her sibling. Tishkovskaya stayed with Podolyan for a few days before they began to suspect that their neighbors might inform on them and Podolyan decided to move Tishkovskaya to a safer place. Hidden in her cart under a haystack, Podolyan took Tishkovskaya to the town of Dniprodzerzhinsk, where her mother, Sofya Shapovalova, lived. Shapovalova knew Tishkovskaya and her family and she was horrified when she heard about the fate that had befallen them and the Jews of Kirovograd. Shapovalova’s neighbors knew that she had two daughters and she simply pretended that Tishkovskaya was Valya.