In times when spiritual support is especially needed, we turn to figures who can nourish the resilience of each of us. Among them is Oleksii Glagolev, a priest who knew how to see the will of the Almighty even above the abyss of hell and preserved humanity in the darkest times.
The future Righteous Among the Nations was born in Kyiv into the family of an Orthodox priest, theologian, and professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy, Oleksandr Glagolev. Excellent knowledge of the Old Testament, Hebrew and ancient Aramaic, Jewish tradition, and the history of early Christianity determined the philo-Semitic sentiments of Father Alexander and his family. In the fall of 1905, Alexander Glagolev prevented a pogrom in Kyiv. He organized a procession through Kontraktova Square to Jewish shops in Podil, where an angry crowd gathered. The priest managed to dissuade the robbers from their evil deed. During the trial of Mendel Beilis, accused of ritual murder, Alexander Glagolev was involved in the preliminary investigation as an expert on the issue of the consumption of human blood by Jews. In his expert speech, he stated that the Torah prohibits the shedding of human blood and its consumption for food; The Talmud and other rabbinical texts do not abolish or soften this law. Therefore, Father Alexander's examination was a strong argument in favor of opponents of the ritual murder version.
Oleksii spent his childhood in ancient Podol. He received a spiritual and secular education: he graduated with honors from the Third Kyiv Gymnasium; then he became a graduate of the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy; later (in the second half of the 1930s) he graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute. Alexey knew several modern European languages and ancient Greek. He dreamed of continuing his father's work and accepting a church rank, but new times had come…
The Glagoliev family suffered from the persecution of the communist authorities: Father Alexander was arrested twice in the 1930s; he died in 1937 in Lukyanivka prison during torture (the elderly man was forced to stand with his head bowed for hours during night interrogations). Oleksii Glagoliev was also arrested in 1932 and accused of counter-revolutionary activities; however, he was released a week later due to lack of evidence. Oleksii's family (in January 1926 he married Tatyana Bulashevich, the daughter of a sugar factory owner) was evicted from their home - they had to live in a damp basement with their young children. Oleksii had to earn his living by doing manual labor – as a watchman, concrete worker, weigher… He was destined to be ordained a priest only at the age of forty – during the Nazi occupation, when the Germans, trying to enlist the support of Christians, allowed Orthodox churches to open.
Oleksii Glagolev was ordained a priest in Kamianets-Podilskyi and began serving in the newly opened church of John the Warrior at the Pokrovsk Church in his native Podil, Kyiv. However, Father Alexey was not imbued with an uncritical attitude towards the occupiers; the spiritual foundation of his personality was too powerful (later, in April 1942, Oleksii Glagolev was the only one among Kyiv priests to refuse to serve a prayer service to Hitler in honor of his birthday). When orders were posted throughout Kyiv that all Jews of the city and its environs should appear on Monday, September 29, at the corner of Degtyarevska and Melnykova streets, the Glagolev family understood what would happen next. They decided to save people. The house of priest Oleksii Glagolev was located next to a police station and a German military hospital. He and his entire family faced the death penalty for hiding Jews. And yet the Glagolevs took the risk…
Thus, during the fall of Christian civilization, Father Oleksii, Mother Tatiana, and even the older children, Magdalena and Mykola, saved Jews who were in the greatest danger of being executed in Babyn Yar. They hid the persecuted in the bell tower and the basement of the church; Father Oleksii issued them baptismal certificates on old forms left over from Archpriest Oleksandr; he arranged for them to work as clerks, grooms, and singers. Tatiana Glagoleva even dared to give her passport and baptismal certificate to a Jewish woman, Izabela Mirkina, which allowed the persecuted woman, along with her 10-year-old daughter, to stay for eight months in the village of Zlodiyivka (now the city of Ukrainka) and escape from inevitable death…
After the war, Father Oleksii continued to serve in the Pokrovsk Church until its closure during another anti-religious campaign in 1960; thus, the priest was once again deprived of his most natural mission. However, the atheistic antics of the Soviet bureaucracy could not deprive Oleksii Glagolev of the power of spiritual influence.
In 1991, the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute recognized Oleksii Glagolev and his family members – his wife Tatyana, daughter Magdalena, and later (in 2000) son Nikolai – as Righteous Among the Nations. Trees were planted in their honor on the Alley of the Righteous in Jerusalem.
In 2002, a memorial plaque dedicated to priests Oleksandr and Oleksii Glagolev was installed on the wall of the academic building of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy on Voloska Street. In 2022, a street in Kyiv was named in honor of the Glagolev family.
You can learn more about Oleksii Glagolev and his family from the online lesson posted on the Museum's pages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_mC5uDJSnk&t=10s
Dr. Olena Ishchenko