Raisa (Raya) Agranovich lived with her parents in the town of Seredina Buda in eastern Ukraine (on the Russian border). With the invasion of the Germans into the USSR in June 1941, her father Lev Agranovich was recruited to the Red Army. The town was occupied by the Germans in October 1941.
On 16 November, all the Jews of the town were taken for registration at the local police station, and then to be executed at a killing pit nearby. Raisa fell into the pit but was not wounded. The murderers did not realize that she was still alive, and when night fell she crawled out and returned by foot to the town. She knocked on several doors, but the owners refused to let her in. However, at the house next to the police station, the door was unlocked and when she entered, she saw a policeman she had met earlier, during the registration process.
The man, Pavel Natarov, was living in the house. He ordered the owner and her children to take care of Raisa. they washed off the blood and dressed her frostbite wounds. The next day Raisa became ill and stayed in bed for about a month, as she recalls. Towards the spring of 1942, Natarov married Maria Zhitkova, and the couple moved in with Zhitkova's parents. They took Raisa with them, and Natarov even got hold of fake documentation in the name of Nina Natarova, his niece as it were.
Natarov and his young wife cared for Raisa with love.
There were rumors that the Zhitkov household was hiding Jews, but they died out with time. The family warned the young girl, who had "Jewish features" not to wander around outside.
In the spring of 1943 the town was liberated by partisan forces, after fierce fighting in the region. Just before the partisans entered, Natarov was arrested by the Germans and taken away. When the Soviet partisans took control of the town, Maria's mother sent Raisa to them and instructed her that when she arrived at the partisan camp, to tell them she was Jewish. The partisans took Raisa with them to the forest. After a while they transferred her in a light airplane, wounded, to the Soviet front.
In 1944, Raisa's aunt found her by chance in an orphanage. In 1945, her father, Lev, arrived back home and was reunited with his daughter. Raya immigrated to Israel from there in 1995.
For all of her adult life, both in the Soviet Union and in Israel, Raisa endeavored to find her rescuer, including turning to the newspaper in Seredina Buda as well as the local municipality. With their help, she found Maria, Natarov's wife, with whom she stayed in contact. "I did find out that he died in 1992 and was buried in the city of Dnepropetrovsk," recalled Raya.
"The people of the town didn't remember much about him, however, because he lived a very solitary life. I am delighted that his heroic deeds have finally been recognized."
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 95.
