Yavgenya Basov

Yavgenia was born in 1936 in a small village in Ukraine. She was five years old when the Nazis rounded up all the village's inhabitants, most of whom were Jews, and banished them to a nearby forest that they fenced in and named Camp Kopai. Among those who were displaced to the camp was Yavgenia's family, her mother, two brothers, sister and baby sister. Yavgenia's father was separated from them and sent to another camp.

Yavgenia vividly remembers the story of her baby sister's survival. Babies were not admitted into the camp, they were slaughtered outside the camp's entrance. Yavgenia's mother knew this, so the family searched for a hiding place and found beneath a tall tree a hole in the trunk and hid the baby.
For two years the family lived in humiliating conditions without water, food or warm clothing. They ate only what they found in the forest. It was an impossible existence. Every morning the Nazis would collect the bodies of those who didn't make it through the night and move them to a large pit.

Yavgenia recalls the day her baby sister was saved from death. The baby, who was hidden in the hollow trunk of the tree, was crying non-stop as her body was stung by ants who invaded the hiding place. A Nazi soldier arrived on the scene, pulled the baby out of the tree trunk and wanted to shoot it, but when he saw how it was all swollen up he said: "She will die like that too, it's a shame to waste a bullet on her" and threw her down on the ground. And the baby survived!

In 1942 the Romanians came and transferred those who were still alive to the Kopiagorod ghetto, where they survived for another two years and were finally liberated by the Red Army.

In 1997 the whole family immigrated to Israel and learned that Yevgenia's father had also survived.

Since 2006, Yavgenia has been residing in the Amigour Sheltered Home in Talpiot, Jerusalem where she is a member of the house choir.