Shevalev Yevgeni

Yevgeny Shevalev, a professor of medicine, was head of the department of psychiatry at Odessa University. During the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, Yevgeny was the director of the psychiatric hospital in the city, in which close to 600 patients were treated. Since the start of the occupation, in October 1941, he was confronted with problems such as feeding the patients and a shortage of medicine, but in particular, he was faced with humane issues concerned with protecting the Jewish patients and workers. To resolve this problem, he filled out about 20 new “patient cards” on which he recorded fictitious names. This enabled him to permit the Jewish workers to stay in the hospital under the guise of being patients. One of these was Michail Gershensohn, a paramedic, and Gita Vekselman, a nurse. Later, with the help of his son, Andrey, who was a 22-year-old biology student, and some of the members of the staff, Yevgeny managed to change the names of the Jewish patients in other departments, so that towards the beginning of 1942 not a single Jewish name remained on the list of patients. Yevgeny was also devised a means by which to, at least partially, solve the problem of supplies; he and members of his staff sold some of the possessions and personal belongings of patients who died in order to obtain funds with which to purchase food and supplies. Although he distributed everything he obtained among the patients, some of them still starved to death during the hard winter of 1941-1942. At the same time, Yevgeny continued to badger the city authorities to help support the institution he headed, and towards the spring of 1942, he met with success. Among the Jews who found refuge in the hospital were some friends of the Shevalevs from before the war. In January 1942, Andrey brought Vladimir Tendler, his classmate, who had fled from a transport of deportees from Odessa to camps in Transnistria, to his father’s office. Yevgenyinstructed Vladimir on how he should behave as a psychiatric patient. Later, the family of patients was joined by Lilia Rappoport, a 17-year-old girl, who had survived the massacre of the Jews in the Stadnaya Balka farmstead (Odessa District), where her mother, grandmother, and aunt were murdered in front of her eyes. On her own, she managed to return to Odessa and appealed to Andrey, whom she had met when they were both volunteers during the German siege of Odessa, for help. Until the liberation of Odessa by the Red Army, Lilia pretended to be autistic. The years she spent in the guise of a mental patient were deeply etched in her mind. After the war, Lilia decided to study psychiatry. No information is available as to how many Jews were saved in that hospital under the aegis of Professor Shevalev and his devoted staff. The Jews of the city hold the Shevalev family in great esteem to this day. On April 12, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Yevgeny Shevalev and his son, Andrey, as Righteous Among the Nations.