Manya Bigunov lit one of six torches at the State Opening Ceremony of Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem in 2021 Manya Bigunov was born in 1927 in the Ukrainian city of Teplyk the youngest of Nahum and Frima's three children immediately after their invasion of the Soviet Union the Germans began shooting hundreds of thousands of Jews at hundreds of murder sites and sent residents from the city to forced labor the Germans rounded up some of the camp workers one of the Germans slammed Manya against a wall and she lost consciousness where all the Jews on the trucks were unloaded and shot to death Manya was transferred to different labor camps She escaped from one of the camps with her friend Esther There Manya found her father among a group of Jewish professionals who were being held by the Germans for work purposes The group paid a local man to lead Manya and her friend to the Bershad ghetto in Transnistria they had to cope with harsh living conditions three weeks before the area was liberated by the Red Army where she was reunited with her brother and sister who served in the Red Army and survived in POW camps by concealing his Jewish identity former prisoners being considered traitors by the Soviet regime Manya worked tirelessly to preserve the memory of the Jews of Teplyk who were murdered in the Holocaust She immediately began to write about the experiences of her Jewish community She described every house where Jews lived before the war and wrote down the names and stories of all the Jewish occupants of each house was transferred to the Yad Vashem Archives Manya filled dozens of Pages of Testimony commemorating the people of Teplyk She was also active in a group that erected a monument to the Jews of Teplyk and held memorial ceremonies there Manya immigrated to Israel with her daughter and two granddaughters Manya Bigunov has told her story to thousands of schoolchildren The Yad Vashem website had recently undergone a major upgrade The page you are looking for has apparently been moved We are therefore redirecting you to what we hope will be a useful landing page For any questions/clarifications/problems, please contact: webmaster@yadvashem.org.il