Rakovich Aleksandr & Ulyana

Rakovich, Aleksandr Rakovich, Ulyana Aleksandr Rakovich and his wife, Ulyana, were farmers living in the town of Dąbrowica, district of Wołyń (today Dubrovytsya, Rivne District). Their home was located on a crossroads in the town center and their neighbors were the Barmans, the owners of a local flourmill and power station. The Barmans were experts in generating electrical power and they managed their plant until the Germans conquered the town, on July 6, 1941. During the occupation, the Barmans’ expertise was considered essential for the functioning of the town and thus they received permits to leave the ghetto and to continue to oversee the workers at their power station. Through these workers, some who had family connections to the police, Berko Barman and his nephew Avraham Barman learned that something was about to happen in the Dąbrowica ghetto. Thus, in summer 1942, the two of them hid with non-Jewish acquaintances outside the ghetto. From their hiding place, the Barmans heard that the ghetto was liquidated on August 26, 1942, and all the local Jews were killed, including all the members of their family. They subsequently approached their former neighbors, the Rakoviches and asked for shelter. The Rakoviches had four children between the ages of two and nine and feared that they would not be able to keep a secret. However, after some serious deliberation, the haystack in their threshing room became a hiding place for the Barmans. The two Jews hid there for six months. Early in the morning of February 6, 1943, they heard shots being fired and through the gaps in the hay they saw that partisans had entered the town. They carefully crossed through a neighbor’s yard and joined the men of the forest. The two then fought alongside the Saburov partisan unit until the liberation of the area, on January 10, 1944, and then they joined the Red Army. In early 1945, Berko Barman was killed in action on German soil. In December of that year, Avraham Barman reachedEretz Israel. He renewed contact with the Rakovich family, in 1991, and thanked them then for their wartime rescue efforts. On April 14, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Aleksandr and Ulyana Rakovich as Righteous Among the Nations.