Semchuk Julia ; Mother: Maria ; Father: Ivan

Semchuk, Yuliya Semchuk, Ivan Semchuk, Mariya Yuliya Semchuk and her parents, Ivan and Mariya, lived in the village of Suchowola, Tarnopol District (today Sukhovolya, L’viv District). In July 1941, when the Germans conquered the area, 15-year-old Yuliya was recruited to work as a maid in the local police station. One day while working there, she overheard some policemen talking about the imminent deportation of Jewish men from the village. When they mentioned the name Friedman, Semchuk’s neighbor, she left her post and ran to his home to warn him. Friedman immediately left his home and went into hiding for a few weeks. The local Jews who were deported later that same day from the village never returned home. Friedman soon returned to his family and, until December 1942, he worked with the other remaining Jews as a slave laborer on farms in the vicinity. A few days before these Jews were to be moved from the farms to the Brody ghetto, Friedman, his wife, their children, Henry and David, and Clara Singer, a young Jewish woman, decided to run away. They headed for the Semchuks’ home. The Semchuks welcomed the Jews into their home and hid them in a concealed hiding place in the barn loft until the liberation, in March 1944. When they left their shelter, the Semchuks asked them not to tell anyone how they had survived the war because the Semchuks feared acts of revenge against them by Ukrainian nationalists. The Friedmans left the Soviet Union and eventually settled in the United States. Clara Singer (later Feldman) immigrated to Israel. In the 1980s, Singer and the Friedmans renewed contact with the Semchuks, and Yuliya Semchuk visited the Friedmans in the United States, in 1989. On July 17, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Yuliya Semchuk and her parents, Ivan and Mariya Semchuk, as Righteous Among the Nations.