Marchuk Yevtikhiy & Anna

Marchuk, Yevtikhiy Marchuk, Anna Yevtikhiy Marchuk and his wife, Anna, lived in the village of Wolka Szczytynska, situated in the Pripiat’ marshes in Polesie District (today Shchytyns’ka Volya, Volyn’ District). Among the Jews that lived in the village was the Oremland family – parents and seven children – who were well acquainted with the Marchuks. On June 1, 1942, the Jews of Wolka Szczytynska were moved to the ghetto of Kamień Koszyrski (Kamin’-Kashyrs’kyy). About six months later, three members of the Oremland family – 20-year-old Meite, her sister Pesya and brother Iser – returned to Wolka Szczytynska with a few other Jews who had survived the liquidation of the Kamień Koszyrski ghetto that took place on November 2. Initially, the Jews hid with Ludwika Piasecka* (see volume Poland) but they later turned to the Marchuks for help. Yevtikhiy Marchuk helped the Jews build a bunker in the forest about eight km from the village in which more than a dozen Jews hid in the winter of 1942/43. The bunker was well concealed, and only the Marchuks knew about it. They frequently visited the hidden Jews and when they all fell ill with typhus and one woman died, the Marchuks brought them food and medicine. One day in spring 1943, Meite Oremland noticed a stranger near their hideaway. Fearing that the stranger might have noticed the bunker, the Jews fled and dispersed in the area. As they later found out, that man brought the police, who blew up the place. The Jews hid in the marshes until the liberation of the area by the Red Army, in April 1944, but once in a while they came to Wolka Szczytynska to get food from Anna Marchuk (Yevtikhiy had been killed by then). Shortly after the war most of the survivors moved to Poland and from there immigrated to Israel. Meite Oremland (later Mariya Volnyanskaya) was the only one who remained in the Soviet Union until the 1990s and she kept in touch with Anna Marchuk. On January 3, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Yevtikhiy and AnnaMarchuk as Righteous Among the Nations.