Puzdrenko Ivan & Akulina

Puzdrenko, Ivan Puzdrenko, Akulina Ivan and Akulina Puzdrenko lived with their three children in the village of Britskoye, district of Vinnitsa (today Bryts’ke, Vinnytsya District). When the German-Soviet war broke out, Puzdrenko enlisted in the army, fell into enemy hands, and escaped. He returned to his village, which was already under German control. One night in January 1942, Grigoriy Roitman, the former manager of the cooperative store in Britskoye, appeared at the Puzdrenkos’ home. He told them that he and five members of his family had been hiding in the grassland not far from the village since some local policemen expelled them from their home. Akulina prepared some bread, grains, and potatoes for Roitman and invited him to return to her home whenever he needed to. Thereafter, Roitman’s visits to the Puzdrenkos’ home became regular. For the following two years they aided him, his parents, Moshko and Feyga, and his sisters, Basya, Lea, and Gesya, who all hid in the fields and the forest and never showed up in the village because they feared being denounced. In 1942, the Puzdrenkos also helped Nikolay and Semyon Kornitskiy, Jewish brothers from Vinnitsa and prewar acquaintances of Puzdrenko. After their parents were killed in April 1942, they had wandered around the villages in the district of Vinnitsa and worked different jobs in exchange for food and lodging while avoiding the authorities. The Puzdrenkos afforded the brothers shelter in their home for two weeks, during which time they ate and regained their strength and then they continued to Transnistria, which was under Romanian control. The brothers stayed there until the liberation. During the war, the Puzdrenkos also assisted Jews through their involvement with a partisan unit known as Ulyanov that was based in the Ilynets Forest. The couple served as contact people and intelligence gatherers and they often hosted secret partisan meetings in their home. After the liberation of the area in January1944, the Puzdrenkos settled in Vinnitsa, to where Nikolay Kornitskiy returned. Roitman’s family settled in Lipovets and Roitman himself enlisted in the Red Army and was killed in action. On January 21, 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Ivan and Akulina Puzdrenko as Righteous Among the Nations.