In the alarming days of full-scale Russian aggression, when circumstances daily demonstrate to us the terrifying power of evil, we feel an irresistible need to seek spiritual support in the experience of people who, contrary to the instinct of self-preservation, in dark times tried to preserve humanity. Among them is Oleksii Glagolev, a clergyman who was able to see the will of the Most High even over the abyss of hell.

The future Righteous Among the Nations was born in Kyiv in the family of an Orthodox priest, theologian, professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy Oleksandr Glagolev. Excellent knowledge of the Old Testament, Hebrew and ancient Aramaic language, Jewish tradition, history of early Christianity determined the philo-Semitic attitudes of father Alexander and his family.

Oleksii spent his childhood in ancient Podil. He received a spiritual and secular education: he graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy and the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Institute of Public Education (now Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University). In the conditions of the atheism of Soviet society, after the persecution of his father (father Oleksandr was first arrested in 1930 and died during torture in the Lukyaniv prison in 1937), in the spirit of those times, Oleksii Glagolev and his family (in January 1926 he married Tetyana Bulashevich) was evicted from the priest's house; a young family with young children had to huddle in a damp basement.

Oleksii Glagolev had to accept the rank only at the age of forty – during the Nazi occupation, when the Germans, trying to gain support of the Church, they allowed the opening of temples, but they themselves prepared the mass destruction of people. Oleksii Glagolev was ordained a priest in Kamianets-Podilskyi and began serving in the Intercession Church in his native Kyiv Podil. However, Father Oleksii did not adopt an uncritical attitude towards the occupiers, the spiritual basis of his personality was too powerful. When orders appeared throughout Kyiv that all Jews of the city and its surroundings should appear on Monday, September 29, at the corner of Degtyarivska and Melnikova streets, the Glagolev family understood what would happen next. They decided to rescue people. The house of priest Oleksii Glagolev was located in occupied Kyiv next to the police station and the German military hospital. He and his family were threatened with the death penalty for hiding Jews. And yet, the Glagolevs took a risk…

Thus, during the fall of Christian civilization, the Glagolevs (father Oleksii, mother Tatyana, and even children Magdalena and Mykola) rescued Jews who were in the greatest danger of being executed in Babi Yar. They hid the persecuted in the bell tower, the basement of the church; Father Oleksii issued the certificates of dyaks, palamars, and half-breeds. Tetyana Glagoleva even dared to give her passport and baptism certificate to Izabela Mirkinia, which allowed the persecuted woman to stay in the village for eight months.

After the war, Father Oleksiy continued to serve in the Intercession Church until its closure during another anti-religious campaign in 1960; so, the priest was deprived of his most natural mission for the second time. However, the atheistic antics of the Soviet bureaucracy could not deprive Oleksiy Glagolev of the power of spiritual influence.

In 1992, the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute recognized Oleksii Glagolev and members of his family as Righteous Among the Nations – his wife Tatyana, daughter Magdalena, and later (in 2001) his son Mykola. In their honor, trees were planted on the Alley of the Righteous in Jerusalem.

You can learn more about Oleksii Glagolev and his family from the online lesson posted on the page of the Museum.

Olena Ishchenko