Nechiporuk Anton & Uliana

Nechyporuk, Anton Nechyporuk, Uliana In the summer of 1942, when the Germans took a group of 50 youths from the ghetto of Stanislawów (today Ivano-Frankivsk) to perform forced labor, 14-year-old Isaak Kukker, who before the war had lived in Sołotwina (today Solotvyn, Ivano-Frankivs’k District), escaped from the group. He began to wander from village to village, seeking shelter, but most of the villagers were unwilling to help him, until he came upon the home of Anton and Uliana Nechyporuk. The Nechyporuks were living in one of the villages in Volhynia District at the time. Anton, with the help of a relative of his, provided Isaak with a forged identity card registered in the name of Mykola Andriychuk, a Ukrainian boy that was born in 1932. The Nechyporuks, although realizing that Isaak was Jewish boy and being fully aware that they were risking their lives by sheltering him, did so nonetheless. “Mykola” was dressed in Ukrainian clothes, shaved off his black hair, and began helping the Nechyporuks with work around the house. Mykola lived in this way for nearly two years, until the liberation of the region by the Red Army. In July 1944, at the time of the German retreat, soldiers commandeered the Nechyporuk’s home, forcing the family to stay in the barn together with Mykola, but his identity was not discovered. After the liberation, Mykola decided to return to Sołotwina to look for survivors from his family. When his hopes were shattered he returned to the Nechyporuks who now were his only family and continued to live with his new, false identity. It was only in the 1990s that he returned to Judaism and revealed his story to his children. Throughout the years he had remained in contact with Galina Khmara, the granddaughter of Anton and Uliana, with whom he had grown up in his rescuers' home. On October 30, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Anton and Uliana Nechyporuk as Righteous Among the Nations.