Kovalchuk Leonid & Maria

Kovalchuk, Leonid Kovalchuk, Mariya Leonid Kovalchuk and his wife, Mariya, lived with their three young children in the village of Kuty, Wołyń District (today Ternopil’ District). From the beginning of the German occupation on July 5, 1941, Kovalchuk decided to help people persecuted by the occupying authorities and he hid in his home Soviet soldiers that had escaped German captivity. In September 1942, when Kovalchuk was in the forest, he met three Jews that were hiding in the forester’s abandoned hut. They were from the nearby town of Szumsk (Shums’k) and had escaped an Aktion in the ghetto there. Kovalchuk left them a sack with some food and warm clothes that he had with him and, despite his difficult financial situation, he returned to them the following day and many times thereafter to bring them supplies. When the cold set in, Kovalchuk invited the three Jews to hide in his home, where they met Mariya, who felt particularly sympathetic toward 16-year-old Ilya Ginsburg, who had lost his parents in the Aktion. In early 1943, Aleksandra Sviridenko, also from Szumsk, arrived at the Kovalchuks’ home after having been hidden by a friend. The friend had sent her to relatives in Kuty and when she arrived in the village she had mistakenly gone to the Kovalchuks’ home, where she met the three Jews from Szumsk and was invited to stay with them. Due to Ukrainian nationalists’ activities in the area, it was particularly dangerous for the four Jews to be hiding there. When the danger intensified, the Kovalchuks moved Ginsburg and Sviridenko to Leonid’s parents’ home in the village of Oderadovka (Oderadivka), where they stayed until the liberation, in late February 1944. The other two Jews joined the partisans. After the war, Ginsburg and Sviridenko remained in Ukraine and kept in touch with the Kovalchuks. On December 1, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Leonid and Mariya Kovalchuk as Righteous Among the Nations.