Dyachuk Pedora

Dyachuk, Pedora (Darka) The Ukrainian farmer, Pedora (Darka) Dyachuk, resided in the village of Vakhnovka, Lipovets County, Vinnitsa District. Her husband fell in battle during the Winter War (military conflict between the USSR and Finland, 1939–1940), and Darka had to raise her three daughters alone. Among her neighbors was a Jewish Malyar family that owned a machine for cleaning and processing grains into grits. The villagers used to bring their wheat, buckwheat and other grain varieties to the Malyars for processing. Darka’s husband had worked for Aharon Malyar before his call-up. In the summer of 1941, when the German Army was approaching Vakhnovka, the Malyar family and other local Jews put horses to carts and started their way to the east. En route, German invasion forces overtook them: the soldiers ordered the Jews to go back home, right after local bandits had robbed them of their money and valuables. A few weeks later, when the round-ups started in Vakhnovka, the Malyars began hiding in their neighbors’ cellars. Soon some acquaintance brought Aharon’s niece, a 5-year-old Raya Malyar, from Vinnitsa: she had miraculously survived an Aktion during which her parents had been murdered. Now they became seven: the parents, Aharon and Haya, their children Polina, Vera, Rosa and Leonid as well as little Raya. Darka Dyachuk was the only villager who agreed to hide and feed all of them, although it was by no means easy. She had an unused hut, full of straw and old lumber. The Malyars cleaned one corner of that hut which became their shelter. A haystack concealed the entrance. The Jewish family spent nearly one year in that hut, until the beginning of the summer of 1942. Almost every evening Aharon left the hiding place and worked for the villagers doing various jobs. Farmers paid him with food that helped Darka sustain his family. In the summer the police traced and caught Aharon. He was brought to gendarmerie center in Lipovets and murdered. DarkaDyuachuk could not continue to sustain the Malyars alone so they had to look for alternative means of survival. A neighboring childless couple by the name of Dmitruk took little Raya Malyar. Other family members had to split up: 14-year-old Rosa was hired as a seasonal worker by a wealthy farmer; 11-year-old Leonid started working as a shepherd; Haya and Polina and Vera went into hiding in another village. Until the Red Army liberated the region, they all had to suffer a lot of grief and misery. The family was reunited after the war. Out of all their relatives only one of Aharon’s brothers survived. He helped Haya and her children to move to Vinnitsa and start a new life. The Malyar family maintained friendly relations with their rescuer and visited with her. As time passed, connections were severed. In 2007, Darka’s grandson, born after the war, found Leonid Malyar and his sister Rosa in Israel. On February 3, 2008, Yad Vashem recognized Pedora (Darka) Dyachuk as Righteous Among the Nations.