Czech Couple Named ‘Righteous’ After Death
A Czech couple has been posthumously awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations for saving a Jewish girl in Ukraine during the Holocaust.
Anna Bohatá and her husband, Vincenc, who were ethnic Czechs born in Ukraine, hid a Jewish girl, Mindla Švarc, from Nazi troops and Ukrainian nationalists during World War II. After the war, they moved to what was then Czechoslovakia along with the girl who later married and had three children.
The Israeli envoy to the Czech Republic, Gary Koren, handed the title to Marie Kacerová, a daughter of the honored couple, at the Israeli embassy in Prague on Wednesday.
One of the daughters of the saved woman, Růžena Stehlíková, also attended the brief ceremony. “It’s a wonderful feeling,” she told Czech Radio. “We always knew the family accepted us as their own, and they loved my mother very much,” she said.
The title Righteous Among the Nations, awarded by the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem to non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Shoah, has been to date given to 115 Czechs.
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