Kovalchuk Zofia

Kovalchuk, Zofia Zofia Kovalchuk, a farmer, lived in the village of Klebanowka, district of Tarnopol (today Klebanivka, Ternopil’ District). On the eve of the war, her husband traveled to Canada and she was left alone with her 17-year-old son Stepan. In June 1943, Kovalchuk sheltered in her home a non-local teenager, Mikhail Zahidny, who introduced himself as a Ukrainian. Over time, it emerged that he was actually Aharon Segal, a former resident of the village of Chmieliska (Khmelys’ka), some 20 km south of Klebanowka. Initially, Segal had been hiding in his native village with his father, Gerszon, and siblings, Nachman and Bela, until they moved into a bunker in the forest. Segal then decided that he could survive using a false identity and he found employment as a shepherd for a local farmer. When people became suspicious that he was Jewish, he left the area and arrived at Kovalchuk’s home, where he asked for work. He was originally taken on as a shepherd but, some time later, after Kovalchuk’s son left home and joined the Ukrainian nationalists, Segal began to run the farm. Kovalchuk asked him nothing about his identity and when she discovered that he was Jewish she became even more protective of him and, with the help of her cousin who was the village secretary, registered him under his assumed name in the village register. Segal stayed with Kovalchuk until the liberation, on March 21, 1944. He then found out that none of his family members survived: his mother, Gitl, and sister Miriam perished in the ghetto of Skalat, his married sisters, Bluma and Chaja, perished in Zbaraż (Zbarazh), his father Gerszon, brother Nachman and the youngest, Bela, were killed in the forest at the beginning of 1944. In 1945, Segal left for Poland and later immigrated to Israel where he established a family. On November 18, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Zofia Kovalchuk as Righteous Among the Nations.