Karpuk Anton ; Sister: Lukeria

Karpuk, Anton Karpuk, Lukerya Anton Karpuk, a farmer, lived on a small khutor close to the village of Godowicze (today Hodovychi) situated between Maciejów (Lukiv) and Turzysk (Turiys’k), district of Wołyń (all places today in Volyn’ District). The Germans conquered the area in late June 1941 and a year later Bluma Kletz and her children Roza, Leonid, Mendele, and Icele arrived at the khutor from Maciejów. Kletz, an acquaintance of Karpuk’s, had fled after the Germans murdered her husband and carried out a pogrom in her town. Karpuk, who lived alone, prepared a hole in his granary for the five and camouflaged the entrance with garbage and straw. Every day, he took his wards food and drink, emptied their waste bucket, and told them the latest news. Apart from one of his sisters, Lukerya Karpuk, who lived nearby, no one knew about his hidden wards until about one year later, in July 1943, when police entered Karpuk’s home. Karpuk himself was not at home at the time but Kletz and her daughter Roza had left their hiding place to fetch the food that Karpuk had prepared for them exactly as the intruders entered the house. The two of them were arrested and taken to Maciejów. When Karpuk returned home, the police ambushed him and he was imprisoned for a week. He insisted repeatedly that he did not know the Jews seized in his home. While he was locked up, his sister Lukerya moved to the khutor and took care of 14-year-old Leonid and his younger siblings. When Karpuk was released, he and his sister moved their wards to the home of a Polish acquaintance that lived on an isolated khutor. (The name of the woman and the place are unknown). About a month later, while Leonid was grazing the cow in the pasture, the khutor was surrounded and all its residents, including Mendele and Icele, were arrested and the house set alight. Within a few days, they were all executed in Maciejów. Leonid, who was left alone, wandered around the forest for a long time until he came intocontact with partisans of the Fedorov unit. He fought alongside them until the liberation, in spring 1944. After the war, Leonid settled in Russia and he maintained contact with the Karpuks until they died. On January 10, 1999, Yad Vashem recognized Anton Karpuk and his sister, Lukerya Karpuk, as Righteous Among the Nations.