Kravchuk Nikolai & Yulia

Kukurudza, Mikhail Kravchuk, Ivan Kravchuk, Yuliya The physicians Leon and Mina Deutsch resided in Przemysl, Poland, where, in October 1939, their only daughter Eva was born. This happy event was overshadowed by the outbreak of war, six weeks earlier, and, as a consequence, the murder of Mina’s father, Moses Kimmel, a prominent Jewish businessman in Przemysl. When the baby was only one and a half months old, her family managed to flee to Soviet-controlled Lwow, where they stayed and worked until the German invasion into the USSR. The family then fled to the town of Mielnica-Podolska, Tarnopol District, where some of Mina’s family members still lived. Since the Deutsches were doctors, the authorities used their skills to treat the local population, especially from mid-1942, when a typhus epidemic broke out. They were responsible for 17 surrounding villages, among them the village of Babince (later, Urozhaine), where they became acquainted with a wealthy farmer, Mikhail Kukurudza. Kukurudza’s son Stepan had tuberculosis of the bones and needed frequent calcium injections. After the epidemic subsided and the Jewish doctors were subject to deportation, Kukurudza suggested to Leon Deutsch that he and his family take shelter in his home, thus also keeping the doctor close. From the late summer of 1943, Leon, Mina and Eva started hiding in Kukurudza’s pigsty, then in a shack in his field. The doctors were rather known in the area and their sudden disappearance could have aroused suspicions. Kukurudza therefore spread a rumor that they had been shot while trying to cross the border into Romania. Since the area was constantly searched and Jews were occasionally discovered and their rescuers severely punished, Kukurudza asked his friend, the village head, for help and advice. The village head suggested transferring the Jews to someone who would agree to hide them for money. He approached Mykola Kravchuk, a villager who lived with his wife and their three youngchildren in utmost poverty. For a certain payment he allowed the Deutsches to stay in a bunker underneath the chicken coop on his property, which they built together. Soon, the Deutsches were joined by Mina’s sister, Rachel, her husband, Baruch Goldig, and their nine-year-old son Fishel. Surviving the liquidation of the Borszczow ghetto, they had hid for a while in the forest, until they managed to contact Mikhail Kukurudza (knowing about his connection to Leon Deutsch). Kukurudza brought them secretly to his home and then transferred them, one by one, to the Kravchuks. Once a day, usually at night, Mykola or Yuliya brought them food and emptied the pail. Kukurudza was responsible for paying them: he kept the Deutsches’ belongings and valuables in a hole in the earth on his property, and sold them once in a while. The Kravchuks used the money to buy food for themselves and the Jews in hiding, which did not compensate them for the risk of death they were constantly taking. Living conditions in the bunker were far from ideal: it was cold in winter and the people huddled together in order to keep warm; the layer of hay on the ground was infested with lice, mice and rats. In the spring of 1944, when the ground thawed and the snow was melting, pieces of earth started falling from the bunker’s ceiling, threatening to bury them alive. The Jews had no choice but to get out and call for Mykola Kravchuk to shore up the ceiling with logs. Luckily nobody noticed their appearance “from under the earth”. The six Jews remained in the bunker until the liberation of the area by the Red Army in April 1944. The Jewish survivors left the Soviet Ukraine and in 1948 settled in Canada, where a brother of Mina and Rachel was living. They corresponded for some time with the Kravchuks, until the latter moved to the eastern part of Ukraine. Mikhail Kukurudza was deprived of his property and sent by the Soviets to Siberia. He was sentenced to a ten-year internment and then returned toUkraine. In 1997, Eva (married name, Anderman) and Fishel (by then, Philip) Goldig revisited Ukraine and reestablished contact with their rescuers’ offspring. On February 11, 2009, Yad Vashem recognized Mikhail Kukurudza, as well as Mykola and Yuliya Kravchuk as Righteous Among the Nations.